Two Parts of a 4 part series written by Pultizer Prize journalist, Sydney Schanberg and published in New York Newsday in August of 1993
They met at a tea dance, arranged by their respective Catholic private schools on Long Island - Our Lady of Mercy Academy in Syosset and La Salle Military Academy in Oakdale. "Usually the nuns and brothers lined you up and matched you up," Diana recalled, "but I was on the dance committee, so I had a little influence and being on the short side, I wanted somebody tall, and also with a nice name, so I said, 'I'll take this one.' " She laughed lightly at the memory of her connivance."This one" was John Francis O'Grady, a fearless boy who got his pilot's license at 14 before he was eligible to drive a car. On the bus back to Our Lady of Mercy, Diana Pascale told her best friend, Kathleen, that she was going to marry him. He was 16, she 15. He was an inch or two over six feet, she stood a foot shorter. He was her first date. They married six years later, in 1952, when he was in his final year at Annapolis.
And then, 15 years, seven children and 12 household moves after that, she lost him. His plane was hit on his 31st bombing mission over North Vietnam. He parachuted into the jungle and became a disappeared person, missing in action, fate unknown.Three years passed with no news and she found she couldn't stand it. She needed a resolution. Washington was still carrying her husband as just missing - neither alive as a prisoner nor dead. So she made up her mind to go to Paris, site of the fitful Vietnam peace talks, to confront the North Vietnamese. At about this time, late 1969, a story about her situation ran in Look magazine. It evoked thousands of supportive letters - and tangible commitments from Howard Hughes and Ross Perot to take care of the Paris trip. Diana and all seven children, ages 5 to 17,arrived in the French capital in February of 1970.The North Vietnamese in Paris had rebuffed other MIA wives, but they agreed, reluctantly, to see Diana O'Grady - probably because of the response generated by the magazine article. She and the children went to Hanoi's embassy. There she was told that "your husband is not in our camps."Does that mean, she pressed on, that he is dead?Their reply was cold: "That's something for your government to tell you."Diana O'Grady says she left that meeting believing that the Vietnamese had told her, without saying the words, that her husband was dead. But some of her children were not so sure. "The Vietnamese didn't say our father was dead," says daughter Diana Bright, now 35 (known then as "Little Diana"). "But my mother wanted it over. She didn't want it left hanging. I think she had a sense of guilt about dating. She had a need to hear that he was dead - to make it okay for her to have a personal life."Diana O'Grady herself, recalling that time, says, "All the indications were that he was dead. I decided I had to get on with life."Her son Terrance, now 36, remembers his mother saying to the seven children after Paris: "If your father comes back, it's gravy, it's a special gift. But we can't stay in limbo, we've got to move on.
Yet moving on was a psychological minefield for this family, as it was for hundreds of other MIA families who had a loved one missing - and just possibly alive. And the void that John O'Grady had left behind was particularly large. For he had been more than just the centerpiece of this family; he was the linchpin without which the wheels started to come off."When we lost him, we lost our family," says daughter Diana. "We all fell apart. It was a very dysfunctional environment.
"Of all John O'Grady's flock, it was perhaps his wife who was, in the beginning, the least equipped to cope.She says there were times at first when "I didn't want to live. I had been barefoot and pregnant pretty much through our entire marriage. My world was very small. I had relied on my husband for everything. He made the decisions. Alone with seven kids, I didn't know how I was going to manage. I would actually get in the car and drivearound looking for him. I was so distraught I wasn't thinking of the kids. Mostly I was just afraid."In the middle of all this, only months after John O'Grady went missing, she became severely ill. After hemorrhaging in the kitchen and being sped to a hospital near her home in Las Vegas, she learned she had cancer of the uterus and ovaries. It was removed by surgery, but complications followed and she was back in the hospital. Finally, she recovered, but not before the last rites had been said over her.As her strength returned, Diana O'Grady got back her will to live. The family stresses, however, did not abate.The children chafed without their father. They fought among themselves and with their mother. Patricia, now 40, says that with their father gone, the family soon "disintegrated.""My mother was not a strong woman," she says. Her mother counters, "They had to blame someone for the loss."Daughter Diana says: "Yes, there was abuse, there was neglect, things were out of control at home. But I don't blame anyone. I blame circumstances . . . Your old Uncle Sam wasn't there to help - no counseling, no guidance, no information. They They knew we needed more information." As she remembered that dark time, her anger rose and she blurted out: "If my son were asked to serve, I wouldn't give him to them. Over my dead body."The man whose absence had stirred such turmoil in a once-ordered military family had been his children's guiding beacon. As a fighter pilot he was automatically a heroic figure.
Of all John O'Grady's flock, it was perhaps his wife who was, in the beginning, the least equipped to cope.She says there were times at first when "I didn't want to live. I had been barefoot and pregnant pretty much through our entire marriage. My world was very small. I had relied on my husband for everything. He made the decisions. Alone with seven kids, I didn't know how I was going to manage. I would actually get in the car and drive around looking for him. I was so distraught I wasn't thinking of the kids. Mostly I was just afraid."In the middle of all this, only months after John O'Grady went missing, she became severely ill. After hemorrhaging in the kitchen and being sped to a hospital near her home in Las Vegas, she learned she had cancer of the uterus and ovaries. It was removed by surgery, but complications followed and she was back in the hospital. Finally, she recovered, but not before the last rites had been said over her.As her strength returned, Diana O'Grady got back her will to live. The family stresses, however, did not abate.The children chafed without their father. They fought among themselves and with their mother. Patricia, now 40, says that with their father gone, the family soon "disintegrated.""My mother was not a strong woman," she says. Her mother counters, "They had to blame someone for the loss."Daughter Diana says: "Yes, there was abuse, there was neglect, things were out of control at home. But I don't blame anyone. I blame circumstances . . . Your old Uncle Sam wasn't there to help - no counseling, no guidance, no information. They They knew we needed more information." As she remembered that dark time, her anger rose and she blurted out: "If my son were asked to serve, I wouldn't give him to them. Over my dead body."The man whose absence had stirred such turmoil in a once-ordered military family had been his children's guiding beacon. As a fighter pilot he was automatically a heroic figure.
His military and educational history - Annapolis class of 1952, followed by a shift into the Air Force and then an engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which led to secret work on aeronautical and missile technology - only added to the size of his presence in this household.In sum, he loomed quite large. He set the rules for the children. He appl ied the discipline. They were expected to get goodgrades at school. They were also expected to sit straight and silent at church; if they fidgeted or whispered, they got their behinds whacked when they got home.But hand in hand with the strict father was an athletic and lighthearted Jack O'Grady too, the young man who had loved running almost as much as flying and who had lettered in track and cross country at the Naval Academy. Patricia says that when he would bring the children back east to spend summers with his parents at their modest getaway house in East Moriches on Long Island's South Shore, "he was a different person, someone who was coming home. He became carefree, almost boyish." Terrance recalls him as daring and a bit reckless - "He had no fear, whether he was in a car or a boat or a plane."They also remember, with the vividness that attaches to those who though gone cannot be buried, the nurturing and mentoring bestowed by Jack O'Grady. He gave out a lot of hugs. He encouraged them to reach for higher goals."He pushed me to read books more challenging than Nancy Drew," says Patricia. "I read "Lost Horizons" because of his urging. I began reading books about lessons in life. Even after he was gone, I drew strength from him."During Diana O'Grady's illness and convalescence, Patricia, the eldest at 14, took over as best she could her mother's duties in the household. This did not, however, create a bond between them. Bitterness was - and still is - in the air. In the past few years, the estrangement has become complete. Patricia and her mother almost never speak. When they do, it is only to wage war.Their primal battle is fierce; it is over which of them deserves to be John O'Grady's official next-of-kin - a government designation, now held by the mother, that determines which family member gets access to government documents about him, receives survivor's benefits, has the right to represent his legal interests, becomes the custodian of his personal effects.
As with so many MIA families, some members yearn for closure, while others fight to keep the record open, holding on to hope and clawing for information. Diana O'Grady actively sought closure. In the early years, she petitioned the government in several forums, without success, to declare her husband dead. After her Paris trip, for example, she wrote to then Vice President Spiro Agnew asking him to "list my husband as killed in action so I can plan for the future for my . . . children and so that I, after three and a half years of nothing but worry and illness, would [have] peace of mind and be able to make my future plans."Earlier this year, together the information gathered over many years, Patricia wrote a 50-page chronicle of her search for
her missing father. In it she said: "By 1970, my mother needed my father to be dead and wanted the U.S. government and the Vietnamese government to declare my father dead . . . My father's parents were appalled. I was simply devastated.""Still," she went on, "my mother's need to sever ties with my father, and with her old life, prevailed . . . Her efforts were confused and confusing to a young woman who loved her father, and who felt that, as an American soldier, he should never be betrayed or forgotten by anyone."About the family's trip to Paris,
"About the family's trip to Paris, she wrote: "My mother emerged from the [Vietnamese] embassy and immediately claimed my father 'dead' to all the news media. Death by proclamation. I was helpless to help him."That journey to Paris, more than two decades ago, is the last time the O'Grady family ever banded together as a until Patricia soon went off to college, the University of San Francisco, and began writing letters to her father, saying: "Dad, I miss you." "I'm in college now." "Don't worry about me, I'm fine." "I'll see you soon." and "Don't give up." The letters, all unanswered, were addressed to him: POW, Care of Hanoi, North Vietnam. Diana O'Grady, after Paris, began trying to shape a new life for herself. For one thing, she felt freer about dating. "I wanted to lay things to rest," she says. Not all her children were delighted with this. "They resented it when I wasn't in the house, even if I was only having coffee at the neighbors," she says ruefully. "But I felt that after 9 p.m., it was my time. After being with kids all day, you need adult talk, adult company. I also needed it to learn how to survive in the world." "Within a year, Diana O'Grady, looking for a fresh start, moved to San Diego. There she met a man she was drawn to - Peter Kummer, a business executive, and they have lived together ever since. She put the three youngest children - Diana, Tara and Danny - in Nazareth House, a Catholic boarding school, many of whose young residents were orphans placed there as wards of the state. The two oldest boys, John and Terrance, lived with their mother at home. The seventh sibling, Kathleen, 17, stayed in Las Vegas to finish her senior year in high school, Meanwhile, at college, Patricia had met someone too, fellow student Sebastian Aloot, whom she would marry right after graduation - and divorce 10 years later, after having two children, Eamonn and Amanda.The course of Patricia's life, even as a freshman, was already beginning to take shape. Her considerable energies and intelligence were more and more concentrated on but two goals: the furtherance of her education and her dogged search for information about her father, Her father's parents had already begun the search. Before they died in the mid-1980s, John and Frances O'Grady had carried on a determined campaign to find out what had happened to their only child. They petitioned congressmen, filed Freedom of Information requests for documents, went to court to pressure the government, donated money to POW/MIA organizations, gave speeches and wrote countless letters to anyone they thought might help. All the while the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency continued to keep most of their information on missing men classified - and thus off limits even to their families.Also, Washington refused to change
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