THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 7, 1995 TAG: 9504070565
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
His Vietnam War injuries maimed his body and bedeviled his soul, but in death, Lewis B. Puller Jr. may make a start toward healing the wounds of a nation.
Friends of Puller, including Virginia's two U.S. senators, on Thursday said that a school named for him and built with donations by other Vietnam vets and friends will open this month near the spot where a mine blew off Puller's legs and much of his hands 27 years ago.
Puller was the author of a Pulitizer Prize-winning autobiography that recounted his struggle to recover and his sometimes-turbulent youth as the son of ``Chesty'' Puller, a fabled Marine who was the most heavily decorated Leatherneck of modern times.
In constant pain and confined to a wheelchair after his war injury, Lew Puller helped launch the school project during a visit to Vietnam in 1993. But even as he worked on what he saw as a gesture of reconciliation with the Vietnamese people, Puller struggled unsuccessfully to reconcile the demons the war unleashed within him.
His marriage collapsing as he relapsed into alcoholism last spring, Puller committed suicide at his home in Northern Virginia.
``I know how much this meant to him,'' Sen. Charles S. Robb said Thursday of the school project. ``I think Lew Puller, perhaps more than many others in our society, recognized early on that healing was an extraordinarily important part of the process.''
The school for 535 children in Quang Tri province, near the former demilitarized zone, will be the first in a series that members of the Vietnamese Memorial Association hope to build throughout Vietnam.
In part to drum up support for the effort, the association on Thursday invited Robb and Sen. John W. Warner to unveil a sculpture of Puller that will serve as a model for a plaque to be displayed at the Quang Tri school's front door.
Warner read a passage from ``Fortunate Son,'' Puller's autobiography, in which the author recounts his feelings of love and inadequacy in his relationship with his father.
``Those of us who were privileged to know Lew know that in many ways he did equal his father,'' Sen. John Warner said. ILLUSTRATION: Lewis B. Puller Jr., son of fabled Marine ``Chesty'' Puller,
killed himself last spring.
by CNB