Letters home from Richard in Vietnam, his dog tags and medals, including a Purple Heart, presented to the Sutter family after his death. (By Frank Johnston – The Washington Post)

A Government Check

It took 10 days for the body to reach Atlanta.

"HIS REMAINS WILL BE PREPARED, ENCASED AND SHIPPED AT NO EXPENSE TO YOU," the telegram had informed Dan and Nita Sutter, "ACCOMPANIED BY AN ESCORT EITHER TO A FUNERAL HOME OR TO A NATIONAL CEMETERY SELECTED BY YOU. IN ADDITION YOU WILL BE REIMBURSED AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $300 TOWARD FUNERAL AND INTERMENT EXPENSES IF INTERMENT IS IN A PRIVATE CEMETERY, $150 IF REMAINS ARE CONSIGNED TO A FUNERAL HOME PRIOR TO INTERMENT IN A NATIONAL CEMETERY, OR $75 IF REMAINS ARE CONSIGNED DIRECTLY TO A NATIONAL CEMETERY."

Later, there was a letter from the White House assuring the Sutters they were "in the prayers of Mrs. Johnson and myself at this time of sadness"; another from Gen. William Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, promising "to do our utmost to bring eventual victory so that your son's sacrifice will not have been in vain"; and a check from the treasurer of the United States for the money recovered from Richard's personal belongings.

It was for 90 cents. Dan Sutter never cashed it.

Eventually a letter found on Richard's corpse at Khe Sanh made its way back to Atlanta, too. Wrinkled and dirty, it was from his sister and closest pal, Ellen: "Won't be long now for you! Do you leave the 21st of July still?"

The stamp was canceled with a single word punched across George Washington's face:

"P E A C E"

As was customary, news of the death was to be personally delivered to the parents by military officers. They went first to Christ the King, where a priest volunteered to precede them to the family home on Stovall Boulevard to find Nita, then to Dan's insurance office to bring him home.

Richard with his sister and closest pal, Ellen. A letter from Ellen was found on Richard's corpse at Khe Sanh. (Family Photo)

Ellen Kappel, now 54, remembers she was with her children (Richard was their godfather) when her sister Hannah called and said, "Richard has been killed, and we're sending someone over to pick you up."

"They took me home, and as we came up the street where I'd grown up, and turned into the drive – where Mr. Pittman, the next-door neighbor, had almost killed Richard one day when Richard was on his bike. ..."

"There were a jillion cars parked there," prompts Rob, who's been listening intently, filling gaps in his memory of the personalities and events that still grip him. "I came home from [summer] school and all these people were there. ..."

"Everything began to hit me," his sister continues, tears welling as she retells the story three decades later. "It just hit me, I could see us as children, playing in our yard. I fainted."

Dan and Nita didn't cry at the funeral. They declined to look at Richard in the casket, and asked their children not to, either. Rob obeyed, but Ellen recalls seeing the "whole body. He was in his military uniform. His head looked fine, he had a very short haircut."

"We were raised to be stoic," Rob explains.

Richard had been the rebel – an immense, glamorous and protecting figure on the landscape of Rob's young life: At the family place on the lake, he'd always made sure his little brother wasn't left behind when the big guys went boating; and when he'd crashed the car one time, Rob remembers, Richard's first thought was to see that his little brother was safe.

Then, he'd joined the Marines.

"He was escaping" a tense household ruled by a domineering father and remote mother, explains Ellen, a psychotherapist. "It was a little nerve-racking in Dodge."

It was in Khe Sanh, too, as Richard would learn – too late.

"He was due home, we were planning a big old keg party," recalls Beverly Amos, 51, who worked summers with Richard at a drugstore soda fountain. "We were all young and innocent and there was this awful war going on, but no one thought it would be your friend who got killed: 'Not Richard! He's tough and strange and interesting – like James Dean – and he's gotta come home!' "

"Richard was the best friend I ever had," Doug Dromey, 52, recently wrote Rob, who had contacted him in his continuing search for information about his brother's life and death. "We had a lot of wild and crazy times together chasing ladies and tipping some of North Georgia's best mountain dew.

"To this day, it is still hard for me to realize that Richard has passed on. I can only imagine what you as his brother must have felt."

What Rob felt – and continued to feel – worries his only remaining brother, Lloyd, 58, an attorney. (David, another brother, was killed by a drunk driver in 1981.)

"Rob was 13 and I was almost 30 when Richard died," Lloyd says. "I was old enough to cope. He wasn't.

"Everybody descended on our family, and you can't imagine how bad it was to wait 10 days for the body. My folks' friends came by, and my friends in their thirties, [but Rob was] an early teenager, and death's not in their basket ... so his friends didn't come."

At the same time, antiwar protesters were phoning the house to tell Dan and Nita they deserved what they got for sending their son to Vietnam.

"Rob was a 13-year-old having to deal with violent death in a house where the whole split in America is raging – the antiwar people on the outside, the friends on the inside – with the [antiwar] telephone calls coming in like hot rounds ... vicious calls. It was awful.

"And there's a 13-year-old standing there in grief.

"And nobody notices."

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