The Power of Testimony

SHAWN THORNTON || 39
“And lots of shoes,” Connie added before their mother
hushed them.
As Betty put it, the Thorntons were “not the kind of
people we would normally have picnics with,” but they
were nice enough. The Thorntons paid for John and Bev’s
honeymoon—​three nights in a classy Chicago hotel overlooking
Lake Michigan—​but the honeymooners didn’t get
that far. Twenty miles out of town after the wedding reception,
John spotted a motel and took an early exit.
“That looks like a nice place,” he said.
Bev eyed him with good-​natured suspicion. John
shrugged.
“Chicago’s a long drive. We wouldn’t be there for another
hour and a half.”
Five nights later, they reported to Fort Sill in Oklahoma,
where John entered a new round of training. Then the army
deployed him to an emerging global hot spot—​Vietnam.
There he worked the radio with a couple of officers, scrambling
and unscrambling coded messages that came in. One
day he got a message from his dad, delivered by the Red
Cross: a son, Shawn, was born December 20, 1966.
John was now a father, and I was his son.
Mom sent reel-​to-​ reel tapes of me crying, and the guys in
Dad’s unit lay on their beds and listened to those tapes for
hours. They hadn’t seen or heard their own children for so
long that even my squalling sounded sweet.
Mom and I lived with Grandma and Grandpa Thornton
in their large home until Dad got home in June 1967. He
had avoided, by just a few weeks, the bloodiest months of