Vietnam Bones

This piece first ran on WFCR in Amherst, MA in June of 2003. It won a Massachusetts Associated Press Award in 2004.

This is the story of Dereyk Patterson, a man trying to repatriate the bones of a Viet Cong soldier — stolen by his father during the Vietnam War. Dereyk’s father, Steve Patterson, died in 2002 in a helicopter accident, leaving the remains behind in his garage. As Dereyk tries to do the right thing, he also tries to come to terms with his own stormy relationship with his father, and to understand what would drive a young man to take such a morbid “souvenir” in the first place.

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Vietnam Bones
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