Remains of Dean's Long-Missing Brother Found
The New York Times
November 19, 2003
By JODI WILGOREN and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
BEDFORD, N.H., Nov. 18 - Every day on the campaign trail, Howard Dean
wears an unfashionable black belt that belonged to his younger
brother Charlie, a silent memorial to the man who vanished
while traveling the Mekong River 29 years ago.
On Tuesday, Dr. Dean, who rarely mentions his family on the stump,
interrupted his schedule to announce that a search team had found his
brother's remains buried in a rice paddy in central Laos.
"This has been a long and very difficult journey for my mother
and for my brothers Jim, Bill and myself," Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont,
said after a Democratic presidential candidates' forum at a hotel here.
"We greet this news with mixed emotions, but we're gratified and grateful
that we're now approaching closure on this very difficult episode in our lives."
The Pentagon will not try to make an official identification until after
the remains are flown to a forensic laboratory in Hawaii next week, but
personal items found with the bodies - shoes, a sock and a P.O.W.-M.I.A.
bracelet with the name of a Texan, all similar to those worn by the
23-year-old Charles Dean - strongly suggest the crude grave was his.
Remains believed to belong to his traveling companion, Neil Sharman of
Australia, were also recovered at the site.
Charles Dean is one of 1,875 Americans, including 35 civilians,
still missing in connection with the Vietnam War.
Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, a spokesman for the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A.
Accounting Command of the Defense Department, said the remains were found on
Nov. 8, and that James Dean, a brother of the candidate, was told on Thursday.
Dr. Dean said he and his two brothers shared the news with their mother
on Monday night at a fund-raiser in Washington marking his 55th
birthday. The brief, stoic announcement on Tuesday was scheduled
only after wire services picked up on Australian news reports about the
recovery.
Last year, Dr. Dean, who sought grief counseling in the 1980's after
suffering anxiety attacks, made a pilgrimage to Southeast Asia to look into his
brother's mysterious 1974 disappearance and witness the military's recovery operations.
Dr. Dean has worn the black leather belt with the large, silver-rimmed holes
for at least 20 years, and counts his brother's death as a watershed
that made him more serious about his own future.
"When you go through something like this, you have a tremendous sense
of survivor guilt and anger at the person who disappears and then guilt
over the anger -it's very complicated," Dr. Dean said aboard his campaign
plane as he flew with reporters from here to Houston for a speech and
fund-raiser. "It didn't interfere with my life or my work, but it was disquieting.
I went into therapy and we sort of peeled back the onion."
Dr. Dean said his 2002 trip, which included a meeting with the Laotian
defense minister, a helicopter tour of the area and visits to five sites
where archaeologists searched for remains, was a cathartic experience.
"I've been on the lines, I've helped sift the dirt - teeth would show up every
once in a while," he said in an interview before the discovery. "I know
what the government did to try to get evidence of what happened to these
folks, and believe me, I don't think they left any stone unturned."
Charlie, 16 months his junior, slept above Dr. Dean in bunk beds,
and often led the four Dean brothers in building forts outside their East Hampton
country house. Dr. Dean has said that if he were alive, Charlie would be
running for president, with him as campaign manager.
Some have suspected that Charlie was working as a spy, but others
believe he was simply a wayward tourist.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Charlie Dean
set off for a yearlong adventure around the world, spending months in
Australia and Japan before heading to Laos with Mr. Sharman.
Colonel O'Hara said the two young men left Vientiane, the Laotian capital, in
September 1974, and planned to take a ferry across the river to Thailand,
but "never showed up where they were going to."
On the plane on Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Dean recounted how he learned
that his brother had been captured by Communist rebels, the Pathet Lao.
The call came in October 1974, as he was heading for a test at Columbia University,
where he was taking classes to prepare for medical school.
Dr. Dean said the family later learned that Charlie had spent time in a
prison camp, even growing some food in a garden, before being taken off in
a truck on Dec. 14.
Both of Dr. Dean's parents went to Laos to search, but found nothing.
An unsigned letter informed the family of Charlie's death in 1975, Dr. Dean
said.
"I met the witness who saw my brother's body and Neil's," Dr. Dean
said on Tuesday, recalling his visit in 2002 to the 150-yard plot in Bolikhamxai
(pronounced BOH-lee-kum-sigh) province, where the remains were found.
"I got him away from his minder. He said the North Vietnamese killed
him, but of course you don't know."
The campaign does not plan to alter Dr. Dean's schedule, though he said
he will probably travel to Hawaii for a repatriation ceremony on
Wednesday, which had been intended as a day off. But the discovery
of the remains overshadowed what the campaign had pumped up as a major
speech on Tuesday in Houston.
"We know what happened to Enron," Dr. Dean said, speaking to a
crowd of 1,200 about a mile from the headquarters of the scandal-plagued
corporation. "Moral bankruptcy led to fiscal bankruptcy.
And the ethos of Enron is where this president's politics and policies have led us in
America."
"When the people take back their government from the powerful
few who control it," Dr. Dean said, "we will be able to make real change for the
future of our country."
Dr. Dean's brother James and mother, Andree M. Dean, declined
to discuss the discovery.
Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's P.O.W./M.I.A. operation,
said the excavation where Dr. Dean's brother was apparently found was one
of three being conducted as part of a monthlong Laotian mission,
and was the result of seven investigations into the disappearance of the two
young men. He said such recoveries are fairly typical of the 600-person,
$103 million annual operation, and noted that 708 sets of positively
identified remains have been found in Southeast Asia since the
search began in 1985
In addition to the 1,875 people still believed buried in Vietnam, Laos,
Thailand and China, Mr. Greer said, the Pentagon continues to search for
78,000 Americans missing from World War II, 8,100 from the Korean War,
126 from the cold war, and three from the Persian Gulf war.
"We send our teams into a country 30 days at a time," Mr. Greer explained,
"armed with very detailed information on specific cases - they don't
just go digging randomly."
"It's very routine," he said of the recovery. "We bring these folks
back every month, month after month after month, for a long time."
Colonel O'Hara said physical evidence connected to Charles Dean
was first discovered on Oct. 28, after a search in another spot in August.
Unlike Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose experience as a prisoner
of war in Vietnam became a major theme of his 2000 presidential
campaign, Dr. Dean never discusses Charlie's disappearance in
public forums. But on Tuesday, he said his own loss helps him empathize with
military families.
"I've seen a lot of families come up to me and say my son is in Iraq,
can you bring him home," he said. "I know what they feel like."
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