After Traveling 8,473 Miles, a Diary Makes Its Way Home

During Memorial Day weekend in 2012, Linda McBrayer drove to Missouri to receive an extraordinary gift: the diary her father kept when he was a Vietnam War soldier. A baby when he died, McBrayer finally got to know her father 40 years later through the journal that had traveled 8,473 miles from Vietnam to a bookcase in Independence, Mo.

McBrayer performed this monologue as part of the Minnesota Remembers Vietnam “Epilogue” event at The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts.

This story is part of the collection The Call to Serve: Stories of Sacrifice, War and the Way Home, which was funded by the Fred C. and Katherine B. Andersen Foundation.