The War Didn’t End in 1975

On Daughters, Silence, and the Things Vietnam Veterans Left Behind

By LONNIE KING

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The Vietnam War may have ended fifty years ago, but for many families, the silence it left behind still echoes today.

I recently watched a 2018 episode of Dateline NBC called “Father’s Day,” hosted by Harry Smith. It told the story of Jim Heintz, a Vietnam veteran who, decades after returning home, discovered through a DNA test that he had fathered a daughter during the war. Her name was Linh.

The emotional arc of the story was powerful: Jim and his wife Jeri traveled to Vietnam to meet Linh for the first time, reunited with her in an embrace that transcended decades of silence, and ultimately brought her and her family to the U.S. It was a story of reckoning, reunion, and unexpected grace.

And yet, it stirred something more complex in me. Watching Jim weep over lost time and open his heart to a daughter he never knew, I found myself thinking not only about him—but about the Vietnam veterans I’ve known personally. Especially my father-in-law.

He served two tours. He was wounded—twice. And he came home. But like many veterans of that era, he never really talks about Vietnam. His comments, when they come, are brief and bitter. He doesn’t reminisce. He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t even seem angry so much as resigned. The war is a wound that has never been cleaned—just tightly bandaged and left untouched.

And that silence—it hurts my wife.

She has carried that ache for as long as she can remember. Not because she wants graphic details or stories of violence, but because there’s a part of her father’s life she’s never been allowed into. A part that shaped who he is. A part that shaped how he sees the world. And that part remains closed to her.

It makes her feel shut out. Not because he doesn’t love her—he clearly does—but because the very events that scarred him have become a wall she can’t get past. And she feels that deeply.

The Quiet Legacy of War

We often think of war in terms of what happens on the battlefield. But the longer I live, the more I believe the true legacy of war isn’t found in footage or textbooks—it’s in the gaps in family stories, the quiet estrangements, the unanswered questions that quietly break hearts across generations.

Vietnam didn’t just divide a country—it splintered souls.

It turned young men into reluctant survivors, and then often left them unsupported—both by the country that sent them and by the public that received them.

Some came home and rebuilt. Some numbed themselves. Some disappeared into silence.

But what nearly all of them shared was this: no roadmap for healing.

When Stories Go Untold

What struck me most about Jim’s story wasn’t that he had a daughter he didn’t know. It was that he let that truth change him. He could have denied it. He could have hidden it. But instead, he reached toward it.

And in doing so, he gave his daughter—and maybe himself—a chance to start again.

Not everyone gets that chance. Not every veteran is ready. But watching that episode made me wish more families could experience that kind of reckoning. Not for spectacle. Not for closure. But for peace.

Even if the peace is imperfect.

Even if it comes too late to make things whole.

Because some kind of peace is better than none.

A Personal Note

I don’t pretend to know everything my father-in-law carries. I don’t know what he saw. I don’t know what he regrets. And I don’t know what, if anything, he left behind.

But I do know this: his silence has shaped the relationship he has with his daughter, and that silence hurts her. There’s a whole chapter of his life that she’s never been allowed to read. And she feels that absence—not as an intellectual gap, but as a personal wound.

The war may have ended in 1975. But for some families—especially daughters still waiting to understand their fathers—the war is still ending.

Watch the story that inspired this post:
Dateline NBC — Father’s Day (Season 26, Episode 39)