Bryant had gone to George Washington as an undergraduate, too, studying Elizabethan literature and protesting the war in the nation’s capital. Reynolds was a graduate of Harvard, where he played hockey, majored in history and, through his student status, received a draft deferment when young men were being sent to fight in Vietnam.
At Rosebud, Reynolds lived with new acquaintances and old friends from his New England prep school. These young men — barely out of their boyhoods — had already made their way to the Australian outback. One close friend was his buddy Charlie Dean, the brother of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who is now chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Charlie Dean lived and worked and played at Rosebud in the months
before he traveled to Southeast Asia, a trip that would end in his capture
and execution by the Pathet Lao, in Laos, in late 1974. Reynolds, who is now
57, wound up settling in Vermont, where he lives in Lincoln and teaches at
Mount Mansfield Union High School.
Bryant, 61, is a former English teacher at MMU, a writer, and the wife of
Reynolds. She is the author of a new book, her first nonfiction work, “While
in Darkness There is Light: Idealism and Tragedy on an Australian Commune.”
The book focuses on the lives of Reynolds and Charlie Dean as young men:
each considering his next move, his place in the world, while living a kind
of exotic, fun-filled and sometimes wild adventure in a faraway land.
“It was such a time of searching for yourself,” Bryant said. “Do you
remember being 22, 23, 24? To have a dream, to have a passion, and to not
know how to satisfy that passion is a very difficult thing at that age.
Charlie was looking for the right thing to do.”
Bryant’s book, with a moving foreword by Howard Dean, chronicles a time of
social and political upheaval, when American youth questioned the more
conventional lives of their parents and dared to dream big, bold dreams —
sometimes acting upon them. The book is an exploration of the choices young
men make and why, on occasion, they put themselves in the face of danger.
Charlie Dean, who traveled to a dangerous part of the world at a risky time,
was 24 when he was shot to death. If he dreamed of a different kind of
world, he had no chance to help build it.
Bryant believes two primary factors compelled Charlie to travel to war-torn
regions of Cambodia and Laos: A friend’s story about the beauty of the land
and the inexpensive travel. A need to see firsthand the loss and devastation
wrought by a war he opposed.
“He saw the refugees,” Bryant said. “He knew the civil war was still going
on. He saw the boxes of American ammo and he heard the guns. He knew there
was violence and yet he still went ahead. Was it ignorance or was it
idealism?”
Charlie Dean is portrayed as a caring, social and spiritual person — a
determined young man. He was elected to lead the student council his senior
year at St. George’s School. He was politically active at the University of
North Carolina. He worked with great determination to elect George McGovern,
an opponent of the Vietnam War, to the presidency in his 1972 campaign
against Richard Nixon.
Charlie Dean was traveling by boat down the Mekong River with an Australian
friend when he was captured by armed guards and led to a prison camp. Howard
Dean, that autumn of 1974, was living in his parent’s apartment in New York
City. He answered the phone when the State Department called to report there
was reason to believe Charlie Dean was a prisoner of the Pathet Lao, a
Laotian communist group.
“Charlie was such a spiritual person,” Bryant said. “I don’t imagine that he
feared death. He studied Buddhism. Even though he had a lot of personal
angst about what to do with his life on earth, I think he had a certain
peace about the afterlife.”
Howard Dean was in the Midwest this week with the DNC’s Register for Change
bus tour and could not be reached to comment for this article.
He was governor of Vermont when he visited the place in Laos where his
brother’s body, and that of Charlie’s friend, were thought to be left in
death: a bomb crater in a rice paddy. Howard Dean describes it in his
foreword:
“I stood at the edge of a small pond at the paddy and watched the water
trickle through the terraces,” he wrote. “It was incredibly peaceful, and
although I thought it was pretty likely that the skeletons had been graded
to bits long ago and scattered around the site, I knew two things: Charlie
had loved Laos and the Laotian people, and if his remains could not be
recovered, they had found a good eternal resting place. And I knew that I
wanted to come back with my mother and my brothers.”
Dean was running for president of the United States when he learned his
brother’s remains had been recovered. He flew to Hawaii to see them, as
Charlie’s remains were coming home.
It was Dean’s presidential run that inspired Bryant, author of two
historical novels for young readers, to think about writing her nonfiction
book. With Howard Dean in the news, her husband’s memories of boarding
school and Rosebud came forth.“Harry started talking about Charlie and the
more he talked about him, the more I thought there might be something
there,” Bryant said.
She contacted Howard Dean about her idea and he responded with support and
generosity, Bryant said. She remembers meeting him at the Democracy for
America offices. Dean showed up in a paint-splattered T-shirt from painting
his garage and said: “Tell me what you want to know,” Bryant recalled.
Howard Dean’s support was crucial to her decision to carry on with the
project, Bryant said. “I needed his enthusiasm,” she said. “If he had been
reticent, I think I would’ve ditched the project.”
She even called upon the help of Dean’s brother, Bryant said.
“There’s a certain energy behind this book that has kept me at it in the
face of lots of rejections,” Bryant said. At those times, she found herself
talking to her subject: “Charlie,” she’d say, “I’m writing it the best I can
and you have to give me some help.”
The book relies on interviews, research, letters and Reynolds’s Rosebud
journal to recreate the lives of the Australian commune members: Their
farming and fishing, their parties, their pig roasts. Their construction
projects, reckless adventures and thoughts of home and future.
“I learned so much about my own husband,” Bryant said. “I learned so much
about an alternative point of view on the Vietnam War. I learned about
expatriates, and what that was like.”
As a writer, Bryant thought hard about the difference between writing
fiction and nonfiction — and the gray area where these genres meet and might
conflict. Her subjects read the sections relevant to their stories; Bryant
said she paid attention to their suggestions.
“When you write nonfiction, I think you have a certain responsibility to the
people you’re writing about,” she said.
In particular, writing about Charlie Dean’s capture and imprisonment, Bryant
pieced together the story with information from Howard Dean and other kinds
of research. To help recreate the events in Laos, Bryant said she “decided
to integrate imagined elements into the story.”
In her author’s note, Bryant wrote:
“Long reminiscences reaching back over thirty years to the untamed mountains
and rivers of North Queensland have helped me imagine the experiences of
these young men.”
“While in Darkness There is Light” brings to life Charlie Dean, searching,
soulful and kind-hearted.
“And then it always ends the same way,” Bryant said. “And that’s the sad
reality we all have to deal with. In Charlie’s case, what might have been
could have made a difference in all our lives.”
Contact Sally Pollak at
spollak@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com or 660-1859.
Letter from Charlie
A letter written by Charlie Dean to his boarding school and Rosebud friend,
Kim Haskell. He wrote the letter from Bangkok in August 1974, before heading
to Laos:
There once was a young man with two perfectly good heads. He was sort of
proud — after all, two heads are better than one — and he was sort of bummed
out because he had the hardest time making decisions. He had a successful
youth and did many things that most people with just one head only dream of.
He went on a trip, and one head sort of lost interest, and the other head,
previously described as uninspired, or at least under-developed, started to
bloom. And it told the heart (there was only one) to feel its best ever
because here were friends and love that the other head had never imagined.
But just as the two head reached equilibrium, the education ended. The
examination had begun and continues to this day. The young man continues to
roam and, as in all good examinations, he is learning while he is being
tested. And both heads are doing marvelously well. Too well, in fact.
Decisions don’t come easily except a decision by the heart not to choose.
For the heart loves both heads equally and has been touched in return by
both. There is a happy ending, but it is not written. For the heart is
comforted by the words of a brother, ‘It will happen, that’s cool, just let
it happen.’ And so it will, my brothers, because above all, peace and love
and wisdom and harmony will be served.
Love to you all, Charlie
Reprinted by permission of Louella Bryant, author of “While in Darkness
There is Light,” in which this letter appears.