The Aspen Times
Article published October 3, 2003

Filmfest documentaries search for lost lives

By Eben Harrell
Aspen Times Staff Writer

"Be Good, Smile Pretty," a documentary by Tracy Tragos, opens with a subtitle announcing that some 20,000 fathers were killed in the Vietnam War. After this startling revelation, we are introduced to Tragos and a picture of her own father, Donald Droz, who died in the war when the filmmaker was 4 months old. "Be Good, Smile Pretty" commenced as an artistic project when Tragos, idly surfing the Internet as an adult, entered her father's name into a search engine. What she found was a vivid description of her father's death on the Mekong Delta. Within 10 days of this discovery, Tragos had picked up a camera and begun shooting her film.

The goal of Tragos' documentary is to paint as vivid a picture as she can of her father, both for herself and the audience. She begins with the precious few remnants of her father, kept hidden away in a locked chest by her mother - grainy photographs and home movies, scratchy audio recordings. What follows are interviews with those that knew Donald Droz - his widow, mother, brother, war buddies - and it is these interviews that constitute the bulk of the documentary. She travels all across America, hunting down those who knew her father. Tragos also appears in the project, providing candid self-reflection for the camera about the experience of making the documentary. What becomes clear in these self-disclosers is that, through all the interviews, through all the excavation of memories and the past, Tragos hopes she might somehow get to know her lost father, might somehow bring him back to life. In this regard, Tragos fails in her documentary, but it is this failure that makes the film so compelling, and, ultimately, heartbreaking.

"Be Good, Smile Pretty" will be misinterpreted by some as a film about war. It is not; it is a film about grief. In fact, despite its intentions, the film is not about Donald Droz at all. A documentary, try as it might, cannot be about the dead; the living always steal the show. In this case, the film is primarily about the women left behind (mother, widow and daughter), the women told to "Be Good and Smile Pretty," even after the sudden death of a son, a husband or a father.

Most important of all to this film, then, is the secrecy of grief and moral bewilderment suffered at the death of one who was young and who seemed to be apart from death, especially from death leaving behind no explanation of itself as a moral occurrence in a what-kind-of-a-world-is-this-anyway. This moral bewilderment is the closest the film comes to making a political statement about the war.

Although she is a professional writer, Tragos must have had a keen intuition when she relinquished the pen for the camera, for "Be Good, Smile Pretty" is a story that can only be told as a documentary. At a certain point, pain blocks speech. In the face of acute suffering, language breaks down. Where Tragos' film succeeds is in capturing those moments of debilitating and inexpressible grief, those private moments of choking pain when all there is are tears. It is no small feat, documenting the ineffable, and Tragos comes as close as an artist can to expressing the inexpressible.

Perhaps the most powerful of these moments come when the three women of the story (mother, widow, daughter) gather at the Vietnam War Memorial. Not a word is spoken. The wall stands silent and austere. The women weep. For thousands of Americans like them, the war memorial has become their wailing wall.

One of the interesting twists of the film is that it is ostensibly Tragos' journey to discover a lost relationship with her father, but what gets flushed out instead is her relationship with her mother. There exists throughout the documentary a silent separation between mother and child. The mother, on the one hand, struggles to keep her life in order, resisting the torrential outpouring of feeling that comes with the memories of her lost husband. Her daughter, although she has her qualms, pushes her mother to remember, believing it somehow "must ultimately be for the best."

In this regard, it is hard to remain sympathetic to the filmmaker. Tragos' mother believes that, in confronting the memory of Droz, she suffers alone. In response, Tragos' reveals to the camera that "I just don't think my mother gets it." This seems unfair. It is true that both mother and daughter suffer, but it is also true that they suffer different types of grief. For the two women, it is the difference between loss and absence. The mother mourns the irrevocable loss of the man. The daughter, who was 4 months old when Droz died, mourns the absence of the man. It is clear to everyone but Tragos which is the more powerful of the two.

Which is not to say we don't feel sorry for Tragos, nor is it to say that her suffering isn't real. At the end of the documentary, Tragos recounts a dream she has about being with her father. She is a child again. As she runs into her father's arms, she dreams that under his shirt there are stitches that "just barely keep him together." There has always been talk about the magic of movies, about how film can "bring something to life." Yet try as she might to conjure, Tragos' dead father must forever remain so. In a way, her father, stitched together in Tragos' dream, is Frankenstein's monster, nothing more than the creation of his daughter's project. In this case it is a beautiful portrait, but no matter how tender and careful she is in construction, the stitches are still there, never strong enough. This is Tragos' pain.

"Be Good Smile Pretty," was a quest Tracy Tragos had to undertake, even if from the beginning it was doomed to failure. It is the story of the search for a lost man and a lost relationship. It is a film in search of lost time.

In a way, Robert Moss' documentary "The Same River Twice" also searches for lost time. The film revolves around the summer of 1978, when a group of youngsters (Moss included) worked as river guides in the Grand Canyon. They were young, intelligent and very nude, spending the summer living communally together on the rivers of the American West. Moss, recently out of film school, carried a camera with him and the footage he shot that summer constitutes one portion of the documentary.

The other portion was filmed 20 years later when Moss tracked down his friends to document how the span of 20 lost years had affected them. He shows them the film from 1978, documents their reaction, and then spends a few days with each, following them around with his camera. Interspersed within these portraits, Moss returns to footage from '78, lest we forget the juxtaposition.

We are not surprised by what Moss finds 20 years on. Cathy and Jeff, two idyllic young lovers, have divorced. Danny, the wild spirit, now has a child. Barry, a local politician and businessman, is married and fighting cancer. Life beats on.

The documentary makes much of a riverside conversation from 1978, captured on camera by Moss, where the group debate whether to stay in the canyon for "one more day" or to pack up and move on. The implication, of course, is that in the end the conversation was moot, the group inevitably had to leave and face all that life and time bring - family, responsibility, illness, etc.

What is particularly surprising about Moss' film is the lack of nostalgia felt by the adult-guides looking back. For them, the summer of '78 was an Edenic time, yet there is little regret in leaving. They seem to understand that, although idyllic, the place of youth is not a place to inhabit. In this regard, the "Same River Twice" seems a curious, if not misleading title, for part of what the film is about is how the guides can never return to the river. After all, a river, like life, is always changing; you can never revisit the same spot. This sense of inevitability, of life's relentless passage, serves as the narrative sweep of Moss' documentary.

We leave youth and then spend our days growing old until we are eventually devoured by some disease or, if we are particularly lucky, by time itself - this is the reality the river guides face. Yet what Moss shows us is that, eventually, we learn to accept this, and this acceptance often makes us better people. The adult Barry, ravaged by testicular cancer, is a much gentler, kinder, nicer man than the his brash, youthful counterpart. The softness that makes us frail makes us tender.

What happens when we don't accept the inevitable transition to adulthood? One of the guides from 1978, Jim, simply refused the responsibility. Moss tracks him down and, 20 years on, he is still a river guide. Part homespun philosopher (we see Chomsky on his bookshelf), part lunatic, he cuts a sad figure. Like Tithonus, who in Greek myth asked for eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth, Jim, his Lear-like beard by now long and white, seems a child who continues to age. In the documentary, he acts as sort of a control group for Moss' experiment - a portrait of what would have become the guides had they not taken the inevitable plunge into adulthood. A lifelong river guide, Jim is also our guide for the documentary, an impresario fully equipped with violin; it is his scratchy playing (in effect, a reluctant swan song for youth) that ends the documentary.

"The Same River Twice," like "Be Good Smile Pretty," was put together with infinite care. The 20 years between shootings allowed the filmmaker special insight into the comitragic nature of aging. In this way, the film documents a small but poignant chapter in the human drama. Towards the end of the documentary, at his child's birthday party, one of the river guides, Barry, now recovered from cancer, looks around him and tries to explain. "This is what it's all about, I guess."

The Leavenworth Times
September 9, 2003

Filmmaker deals with loss, grief

By RON PICHE, Times Executive Editor

The University of Saint Mary campus was the site of a documentary screening Monday by a first-time filmmaker who has captured the interest of not only the academia and veterans groups, but also the media.

The one-hour film by Tracy Droz Tragos called "Be Good, Smile Pretty," chronicles the filmmaker's struggle to know and grieve for the father she never knew.

Her father, Donald Glenn Droz, was from Rich Hill, Mo. He died in April 1969 while serving as "skipper" aboard a U.S. Navy "SWIFT" boat in Vietnam when Tracy was a baby. He had managed to take leave from Vietnam to meet his wife, Judy, in Hawaii for five days and to meet his 4-month-old daughter, Tracy. He was killed in action two weeks later.

"Before making this film, I thought of my father every day, but rarely talked about him," Tragos said. "I knew asking questions brought up painful memories for the people I love, so I seldom did."

According to George Steger, Ph.D, professor of history and international affairs and chair of the History and Political Science Department at the University of Saint Mary, the event was a springboard to discuss loss, grief and remembrance. Steger facilitated a round-table discussion following the afternoon screening. More than 20 people who viewed the film talked of their reaction to it and their own experiences with loss, death and the pain of war. Most in attendance had lost a loved one to war or experienced the loss of a friend in combat, many themselves veterans. One woman, a history major student at the university, has a husband now serving in Iraq.

The film itself was raw with unrehearsed scenes and spontaneous dialogue between Tragos and her mother, Judith, and other family members who questioned why the film was being made and why she was resurrecting the painful memories of Don's death.

"It was very difficult for them," Tragos said. "First there was the question, 'Why are you doing this? What good will it do? It won't change the ending any. Why do something that's so painful?'"

Emotions in the Red Room during and after the screening were equally raw as tears flowed with those on the screen. Tragos said the experience of making the documentary was filled with conflicting emotions.

"Heartbreaking at times, but also deeply fulfilling," Tragos said. "There was a certain amount of relief at putting it together. I wouldn't say 'closure,' because it's never over, or that you move on and forget, or close that chapter of your life."

Tragos' journey began on March 16, 2001, when she found an article on the Internet about her father's death. For the next two and a half years, she relentlessly tracked down every bit of information about Don Droz she could find. She borrowed a camera and began filming interviews with family, her father's friends, Vietnam shipmates and Naval Academy classmates. Near the conclusion of the film, her mother, Judy, observes, "You now know more about your father than you do about me."

The film is produced jointly by Independent Television Service, Kansas City Public Television and the Orphans of War Foundation and will be aired on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, on KCPT.

At two screenings Monday, one in the afternoon in the Red Room of Berchmans Hall, and another in the evening in Mabee auditorium, a "60 Minutes" film crew was recording the forums that followed for a special on Tragos to be aired sometime in the fall.

And even though Tragos has no direct connection to the university, the Saint Mary campus was chosen for the screenings for good reason, said Sandra Van Hoose, Ph.D, vice president and dean of Academic Affairs.

"Angie Simmons, who is the national producer for KCPT and ITVS, called me and was interested in working together in partnership to sponsor this particular screening," Van Hoose said. "She felt that Leavenworth and the University of Saint Mary was an excellent choice because of the obvious history of Fort Leavenworth and the military, the number of veterans we have here and the VA itself. But she also wanted a university atmosphere, so we could tap into the resources we have here."

Molly Sirridge, vice president for Institutional Advancement at the University of Saint Mary, said about 130 people, many veterans, psychologists and VA affiliated people, attended the evening screening in Mabee Auditorium.

Tragos sat on the stage and took questions from the audience.

"There was a lot of acknowledgment that there was this pain that many people had kept to themselves," Sirridge said. "This helped bring that out. I think they appreciated knowing that someone else had shared this pain and the experience of Vietnam."

Don Droz's brother, Paul, who appears in the film, said he wondered about public reaction to his niece's documentary.

"I've always been curious on how it would be received by total strangers," Paul Droz said. "Apparently it's been received well."

"By chronicling my own personal struggle to know my father, I hope to help others talk about their loss, and to raise awareness," Tragos said.

It is estimated there were 20,000 Americans who lost fathers in the Vietnam War.

Northwestern Alumni News

Summer, 2003

One late Friday night in 2001 in her Topanga, Calif., home, Tracy Tragos (WCAS91), then a freelance writer, took a break from Internet research she was doing for a television script.

For fun, she began entering family members' names in a search engine to see what popped up. This time, instead of typing in Donald G. Droz for her father, she entered a simple "Don Droz."

And there it was—a graphic account by a Vietnam veteran of the death of her father, a Navy lieutenant, in 1969.

Read Full Article

latimes.com | Los Angeles Times

June 13, 2003

The Fathers Who Never Came Home

The documentary "Be Good, Smile Pretty" is simultaneously a woman's search for her father and a powerful statement against war. One cannot watch it without wishing that Tracy Tragos' quest had never been necessary, and that all the young men who go off to war would come home to the little girls who wait. But it isn't always that way.

Tragos never really knew her father. She was 3 months old when, at 26, he was killed in action in Vietnam. As she grew up, his death was rarely mentioned in their home, because her mother, Judy, still grieved, and Tragos didn't want to revive the painful memories of the empty place in their lives.

But there is a longing in human nature to seek out the parents who, for one reason or another, are taken from us; we reach out and gather in their ghosts the way a child reaches hopefully for a cloud. Tragos did just that two years ago when she typed the name of her father, Don Droz, into an Internet search engine, and her journey of discovery began.

What came up was a Web page titled "Death of the 43." It was an account of a 1969 rocket attack on the Mekong Delta that blasted one of a line of U.S. Navy patrol boats into a tangle of twisted metal, killing two men. One was the commander of PCF 43, Navy Lt. Donald Glenn Droz of Rich Hill, Mo. Discovery of the Web site and all it contained suddenly brought into startling focus the person who had been Tragos' father, the daddy who had never come home.

Therein began a two-year, cross-country journey to illuminate the memory of Don Droz and to shape that memory into a living form. His presence dominates the footage that Tragos; her husband, Christopher; and sister-in-law, Katherine, helped form into a film. It will be shown, fittingly, on Father's Day Sunday and the following Wednesday at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Theater as part of the IFP/Los Angeles Film Festival.

The film is an emotionally painful odyssey for all involved. Judy Droz Keyes, who has since remarried, cries with a depth of grief that spans more than three decades. Her deep sobs are laced among images of the man who had been her husband 34 years ago, a smiling, dark-haired sailor, who appears on the screen intercut with scenes of the war that took his life. Keyes blamed herself for letting her husband take R&R in Hawaii, where, for the first and last time, he held his infant daughter. She believes the trip may have softened his combat edge, because he was killed two weeks later.

Men who had been on the convoy up the Duong Keo River on the day of the ambush find it difficult to put into words how much they liked Don Droz and what a dark day it was when they lost him. Former classmates from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, friends and relatives in Missouri, and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who had been a good friend, help bring him alive again.

The title, "Be Good, Smile Pretty," awkward when taken out of context, assumes new meaning when one learns it derives from the way Droz ended each letter home. Warriors, despite the terrible nature of their own situations, worry more about the impact of war on their families than they do about themselves. It is both a tactic of diversion and a caring that is lodged too deep in the soul for even the grandest documentary to define.

I watched a video of "Smile Pretty" at home, alone in a house as silent as a whisper, and found myself drawn into the lives of the Droz family. I thought about my own father, whom I had barely known, as Tragos' dad emerged in the interviews, photographs and war footage blended with great skill into a story worth telling. The film isn't only an effort to satisfy a child who has longed for a daddy beyond reach, but also to explore the terrible drama of loss that accompanies war. My father disappeared from the family not from a death in battle, but from a divorce. I feel his absence even to this day.

Tragos, who lives in L.A. and has worked in film, wrote, directed and produced "Smile Pretty," which has already been recognized as contributing to the art of documentary making. Without her obvious talent, and the abilities of those who assisted her, even this wrenching and enlightening journey down memory lane would not have been as compelling. The film is both an acknowledgment of the tens of thousands of children on both sides of the ocean who have lost fathers in war and a tribute to the fathers themselves, faces in the clouds, who never came home.

This Father's Day is for them.

IFP.org | The Source for Independent Filmmakers

Screening: Be Good Smile Pretty
Independents Night screening showcases new documentaries by IFP members that have yet to secure theatrical distribution.

Tracy Droz Tragos' debut feature, Be Good, Smile Pretty, is both a personal documentary of the first order and a worthy addition to the growing film literature on the Vietnam War and its legacy. But the film's achievement is such that it far transcends this kind of simple categorization.

Tragos was three months old in 1969 when her father, Donald Droz, was killed on the Duong Keo River in Vietnam during a surprise attack on the swiftboat he commanded...

Greenwich Time

Home movie: Daughter learns about late father by making film
By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer

May 19, 2003

More than two years ago, Tracy Droz Tragos expected to come up empty when she typed the name of her late father, Donald Glenn Droz, into an Internet search engine.

Instead, the Los Angeles resident was shocked to find a detailed firsthand account of the April 12, 1969, Viet Cong ambush of a convoy of U.S. Navy swiftboats headed up the Duong Keo River in which her father, a newly married 26-year-old commander of one of the skiffs, was killed. The story stirred buried emotions, she said, and prompted her to start making a documentary about her father, who died when she was 3 months old...

The Boston Globe
Sailors' reunion takes Kerry down memory lane
Vietnam comrades see film on fallen 'swifty'
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 3/24/2003

NORFOLK, Va. -- Thirty-four years after John Kerry left behind the Vietnam War, the Massachusetts senator who earned three Purple Hearts was sitting here in a darkened hotel ballroom this past weekend, watching an emotional film about how one of his best friends died in combat. It was the story of Donald Droz, who was in an accompanying boat the day Kerry won the Silver Star. Only weeks later, Droz was killed in a rocket attack.

By the time the hourlong presentation was over, many of the 100 or so "swiftboat" sailors at the reunion were reliving some of the best and worst days of their lives, with many wiping away tears.

As Kerry runs for president, voters will be frequently reminded of his wartime adventures, a theme already featured in a campaign video. But on this day, Kerry refrained from making any speeches, or even alluding to his hopes of occupying the White House, although earlier that day he wore a tiny microphone and allowed part of the reunion to be filmed by by NBC's "Today" show. This was a day, he said, that was all about "the guys" who regularly risked their lives and a day to remember friends who were killed. For the better part of five hours, Kerry hugged old comrades-in-arms and told war stories.

"I just have an enormous sense of belonging in this place," Kerry said, referring to an emotional, not physical, destination. "I'm glad I'm here with these guys, sharing a part of this unbelievable connection that transcends everything."

For a half-hour, Kerry took a ride on the only known swiftboat still in operation, a vessel that lacks the 50mm guns and is now owned by a local college. For a moment, Kerry said, he felt as though he were back in Vietnam, cruising the river with a couple of crewmates and listening to the engines throb -- a sound he dreaded in Vietnam because it warned the enemy that a patrol was ripe for ambush. But if Kerry was lost in a time warp for too long, he only had to glance at the Old Navy shirt worn by his former crewmate Mike Medeiros, a 55-year-old who joked that his garb was "more than a fashion statement. It's a fact."

Kerry was one of about 3,500 sailors who patrolled the Vietnamese waterways in the specially designed swiftboats, renowned for their speed and vulnerability. The reunion was planned long before there was any prospect that Norfolk-based battleships would be at war against Iraq.

But the bombing in Baghdad provided a surreal overlay to the event, a reminder that young American men and women -- most of whom were born after the Vietnam War ended -- are in harm's way and that the nation was again at war.

Kerry, who led antiwar protests after he returned from Vietnam, voted last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq. But he has also expressed reservations about the way President Bush handled diplomatic efforts before the war. From the moment Kerry arrived here, he was engulfed in talk about the two wars, which are separated by three decades.

"It makes it more emotional, more immediate. We had a big conversation about that at lunch," Kerry said. "I think it does bring mixed emotions because it was a difficult period. We are talking about veterans. They know what the fear is, they know what the exhilaration is, they know the sense of loss."

The veterans were given an emotional reminder of such a loss involving a man that many of them knew well, Donald Droz. Droz's daughter, Tracy Tragos, had stayed in touch with Kerry and had even worked as an intern in his Senate office.

A few years ago, Tragos typed her father's name in an Internet search engine and discovered a story recounting how Droz had died in a rocket attack in 1969. That enabled Tragos to track down crewmates who saw her father killed and prompted her to make a documentary titled, "Be Good, Smile Pretty," which was the salutation her father used when writing letters home.

The film is expected to be shown this year on PBS, but it was screened for the ''swifties'' for the first time over the weekend. Kerry had not seen the film until Saturday, and he appeared riveted by the story.

Tragos was an infant when her father died in Vietnam -- one of 20,000 children left without a father by the Vietnam War. In one of the film's most emotional moments, Droz is seen on an old home movie, shot in Hawaii, where he spent the only days of his life with his baby daughter.

"It was so beautiful, a beautiful film for everybody in there," Kerry said afterward. "It was a kind of journey of sadness and joy at the same time."

When the film ended, the swiftboat sailors, including Kerry, lined up to give Droz's daughter a hug. For this moment, at least, she, too, was one of the guys.

Michael Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com

Kansas City Star
A daughter awakens a tale of honor and of a spirit ravaged by war
10/6/02

RICH HILL, Mo. - Lt. Donald G. Droz, commander of a Navy patrol boat, died of shrapnel wounds to the chest as night fell on a muddy river in the Mekong Delta.

Tracy Tragos was 3 months old when her father's boat was ambushed that April 1969 night in Vietnam. She has heard plenty of stories about him over the years.

Droz was Rich Hill's golden boy. He played high school football, worked in the family grocery, never missed church, made valedictorian, won appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy and received medals for valor in war.

But to really know him, as she had longed to do her whole life, Tragos knew she would need to look beyond others' heartfelt memories.
MORE...

Missing memories
Children of those who died in Vietnam plumb the past for the strangers
they call Dad
By C. RAY HALL

Sunday, May 26, 2002 (The Courier-Journal)

Click here to read.

From the January 10 - 23, 2002 edition of the Messenger, The Santa Monica Mountains News and Arts Publication -- http://www.topangamessenger.com

A Daughter Discovers Her Vietnam Legacy
By Andrea Makshanoff

Don Droz holding his young daughter Tracy during a visit in Hawaii in March 1969, his only visit with her. He was killed two weeks later.
	Judy Droz holding daughter Tracy at the Moratorium March Against Death in October 1969, six months after Don Droz' death in Vietnam.

Many of us surf the net and, aside from the most recent headlines, we normally do not expect to find much that will personally shake us to our knees.

But imagine surfing the net and finding your father's name, a man you never knew, amid a very detailed account of a war action 32 years ago halfway around the world.

Tracy Tragos, 32, a Topanga resident and filmmaker, had exactly that experience in March of this year, when she made what she calls a "gut-wrenching" discovery: an account of the circumstances of her father's death on his boat in the waters of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

Since that day when she saw his name among the military battle prose, Tragos has felt compelled to investigate her father's story in that faraway world of 1969, to try to know him personally, finally. With her camera and her questions, she has prodded those who did know him. And, in revealing the man, she has also made discoveries about herself, her mother, friends and family and the grief that binds them.

"It has grown to be more than me wanting to know who my father is," Tragos said, "but also about our grief and coming to the other side of it." That's something, she said she hadn't anticipated when she started.

Tracy Droz Tragos visiting the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

This personal journey is the subject of a 60-minute documentary Tragos is making titled "Be Good. Smile Pretty" from a line her father wrote in a letter to her mother. Tragos has also established the Orphans of War Foundation, a non-profit organization, and a website, www.orphansofwar.org, to reach out to a larger community and to raise money for her film.

"Is there a point to this painful pursuit?" Tragos asks in the film's trailer. "There must be," she answers, for with every layer she reveals of her father's life, she finds both grief and the potential for more healing. This nation and particularly its community of Vietnam War orphans, 20,000 of them, she says, are ready to mourn the losses of that war.

Although Vietnam was the reason Tragos never knew her father, she says that is not what her film is about.

"For good or bad, whether people think that the Vietnam War was evil or ensured the freedoms we have today, this is not about politics and foreign policy," said Tragos. "I want to free my father's memory for myself."

Shortly after the events of September 11, it was widely said that the current thirty-something generation has never had to suffer the effects of war or economic hard times, or sacrifice for the general welfare.

But Tragos' experience, and the experiences of others like her belies this sentiment.

There has been much suffering, and suppression. Now 25 to 30 years later, the generals are confessing, veterans and senators are recounting their war experiences, widows are finally beginning to grieve and their children are searching for answers.

One starting point for Tragos was the website "Sons and Daughters In Touch" created 10 years ago by a man whose father is an MIA (Missing in Action). Through this site and with the guidance of some thoughtful veterans, she and other "orphans" have been able to connect. Her documentary is an effort to reach out to an even larger audience.

"There are so many of us and we are all finally coming of age," Tragos said. "I talk to other children and they are having these dreams and wanting to know [what happened]. We've been grieving for a long time. There has been an affect of war on my generation. I see so many damaged souls."

Tragos was born just three months before her father was killed on April 12, 1969. Her father, Lt.j.g. Donald Glenn Droz, a Naval Academy graduate, saw her and held her for the first and only time during an R & R visit with his family in Hawaii the previous month.

Droz and Tragos' mother Judith Droz Keyes were married just after he received his orders to go to Vietnam. The couple had lived together for one short and stressful month of pre-combat training in San Diego before he was shipped out. Tragos is the only child of that union.

Keyes was already involved in the anti-war movement before her husband's death. But after he died she felt she needed to speak for him also, so her activities took on an added intensity. She feels certain he would have joined her in her efforts if he had lived. But Tragos refuses to speculate on who her father might have become.

"It's too heartbreaking to think about the 'what ifs,'"said Tragos. "My father would have been a good person. But it grows, you know--he would have been a congressman, a senator." A close friend of Droz' in Vietnam was John Kerry, who became a leader in Vietnam Veterans Against the War and did go on to become a United States senator.

Tragos' project has brought out some unexpected feelings in others who were close to Droz, especially for Keyes. She said she hadn't realized the amount of grief still present around their loss 32 years ago.

"I have been working with a grief counselor ... for the very first time," Keyes said. "It is clear what I did at that time, and what others did when they returned, injured physically or otherwise, was to go into survival mode. The way we survived was to just shut it off." In those days, she said, there was something wrong with you if you couldn't go on.

"But there wasn't anything wrong with us....We were just hurting mightily.

"There was nothing available to the men who came back, nor for the widows and the children," Keyes said. "There was no suggestion that there might be a process that would be appropriate for someone to get help like that. There was no avenue to communicate about it.

"Add to that the incredible tension in the world around the Vietnam War, and what we ought or ought not to be doing. People didn't want to talk about it because there was a kind shame that went along with it, real shame for the widows and children."

Even now, Tragos says she still sometimes finds a lack of understanding.

"Losing a father so young, often people do not think that it registered or that it could have affected my life at all," Tragos said. "They ask, 'How old were you?' 'Three months old.' 'Oh, that's OK.' And 'How old were you when your mother remarried? Oh, so that's the only father you've ever known.'"

In October, with her film crew, Tragos went to the 35th reunion of her father's class at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. She describes the visit as a paradigm shift for her.

"I was so indoctrinated in the anti-war movement--the military is evil, people in uniform are to be mistrusted, and they are not on your side. Obviously my mother was not a bad person, but now I see now how much that was a reaction to my father's death."

Tragos is forming her own opinion now.

"My father thought that the war was senseless but he also had a sense of duty. He didn't want to go AWOL [absent without leave]. And he wanted to see his family again in his small town."

Having interviewed many Vietnam veterans, Tragos has heard about that same sense of duty her father had. Being children of World War II, they still idealized and honored military service. Her father was thrilled to be leaving Missouri for an appointment to the Naval Academy like many who see military service as a way up or out of their circumstances.

But it wasn't until the soldiers got to Vietnam that they understood it. She has heard about their reactions: "This is a mess; it does not make sense, you can't tell who from who and there's no way out; and this is a war that we shouldn't be fighting."

One veteran, said Tragos, described it as "existential vertigo." That, she said "seems to capture what I heard from so many others. You believe your country would never send you to such a pointless endeavor."

While no one says her father died for freedom, said Tragos, "They do say we learned a lot from Vietnam. We won't do that again, and we won't draft."

The non-profit organization, Orphans of War Foundation can be reached through the website, www.orphansofwar.org, or by calling (310) 455-3532. Tragos is also seeking original music and donated or discounted post-production time.

From the October/November 2001 edition of The VVA Veteran, The Official Voice of Vietnam Veterans of America

THE STORY BEHIND THE NAME
By Karen Zacharius

Meet Tracy Tragos. Tracy, 32, is the daughter of Lt. Donald Glenn Droz, who was killed in action April 23, 1969. Lt. Droz was 25 years old. Two weeks prior to his death, he cradled his infant daughter for the first time. His wife, Judith, then 23, had joined her husband for a week of R&R in Hawaii. She took three-month old Tracy along.

Tracy has no memory of the proud papa who wrapped her in a gentle embrace, nuzzling his cheek next to hers. She has a snapshot of that tender moment, but Tracy has gone through her life wondering what kind of father Droz would have been and what secrets the two of them would have shared.

As a young girl, Tracy struggled to understand death. "The big horror for me as a child was wondering what if there is nothing," she said. "What if you really just die and go away? What if my father wasn’t really there looking out for me, but he was just gone?"

But like so many other SDIT (Sons and Daughters in Touch) children, Tracy learned to keep her questions to herself. "I didn’t bring up questions about my father, because there was a lot of sadness and pain around his death. I didn’t want to hurt my mother." Sometimes, Tracy sought out her Grandma Dorothy, her father’s mother.

"She wanted to talk about him, the way any mother wants to talk about her son," Tracy said. Dorothy Droz had reason to brag. Donald Droz had been captain of his high school football team in Rich Hill, Missouri, and valedictorian of his class. After only a year a college at the University of Missouri, Droz had received an appointment the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. "My father did not come from money. He came from a very tiny town. This was his chance to see the world and to have an education. He did not intend to be career military. But he had a sense of duty to his country."

That sense of duty propelled him to leave his infant child and return to Vietnam, to the Mekong Delta, where his boat, PCF 43, was ambushed and he was killed. It was first day back in the field following that week of R&R with his wife and daughter.

The timing of her father’s death troubles her mother, Tracy said.

"It was his first patrol back. It haunts my mother. She wonders if we distracted him in any way that might have caused him to let his guard down," Tracy said. Guilt is the other emotion SDIT members share, a sense that somehow they played a role in the deaths of their fathers. Tracy knows it’s an irrational guilt.

Droz’s boat was on a treacherous mission, transporting an underwater demolition team and eight hundred points of explosives up the Duong Keo Canal. The 43 stalled, a B-40 rocket exploded, and Droz was mortally wounded.

"It was nothing we did, but still you wonder," Tracy said.

For the past six months, Tracy has been working on a documentary about the orphans of the Vietnam War and the fathers who were lost. Initially, the documentary, Be Good, Smile Pretty, gave Tracy an opportunity to talk abut her father and to ask questions, both factual and unanswerable.

It’s given her something more – companionship. The very thing Tracy lacked with her father she has found with so many other Vietnam War orphans, who, like Tracy, grew up longing for their fathers.

"At first, the project was selfishly motivated. I wanted to know my father. But as I started to hear about so many others who were deeply wounded by the Vietnam War, I realized we are all on the same journey. And we all have the same longing."

Funding for the documentary has come from private donations. More than ever, Tracy said, support for the project is needed. "We face mounting production expenses, especially with what is the most expensive part of the project: editing and post-production," she explained.

"I would love for anyone who knew my father to get in touch with me. I want to know more, not just about his service and the way he died, but also about the kind of person he was, even the small things like his blond spot, or the way he flared his nostrils when he was thinking, or the way he signed his letters. It all means the world to me. It allows me to mourn him and remember him as a real person and not a photograph and uniform," Tracy explained.

"I want to reach out to other children who want to share their stories. That’s become the larger purpose for me. I am just a part of this community that has been overlooked. Some haven’t even asked the questions yet. They are still living with the grief."