Karen Hon, a veteran living in Colorado, flies a new American flag every Memorial Day. That tribute barely hints at the holiday’s personal significance. It took her years to get a grip on the day, the month of May, even the month of April.
Karen Hon, a veteran living in Colorado, flies a new American flag every Memorial Day. That tribute barely hints at the holiday’s personal significance. It took her years to get a grip on the day, the month of May, even the month of April.
In May 1968, Hon was 10 years old, living with her family in Chicago, when her father, Army Sgt. 1st Class Johnny Hon, was shot dead by a sniper in Vietnam. His body was brought home for burial on the day before Memorial Day. For Hon’s family, the holiday would come to mean annual visits to the cemetery to lay flowers at his grave.
“Memorial Day is very powerful to me,” Karen Hon tells us, her voice filling with emotion and pride so suddenly it catches her by surprise.
Johnny Hon was a member of the Illinois National Guard and later an Army reservist during the Vietnam era. He and his wife, Darline, had three daughters. Karen remembers dancing the twist with her father when she was about 8, and riding in a truck together to retrieve school desks and books from a closed church. And her goodbye hug: She was allowed on the plane to see him off in his dress greens.
“It wasn’t a popular war, that’s obvious,” Karen Hon says. “However, my father had the fortitude to say, ‘This is America, this is my country.’” Duty called, and Sgt. Hon volunteered for Vietnam. He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and was leading a patrol when he was killed. It happened about six weeks into his tour. He was 32.
Karen Hon remembers that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley came to the funeral home. Darline Hon told the Tribune a year after Sgt. Hon’s death that he loved the Army: “I guess I’m just a soldier’s wife — and very proud of it.” But with the war dividing America politically, the years afterward weren’t always easy. “There were people who tried to be hurtful,” Karen Hon says. “You lived with that.”
Military service in the post 9/11 era is nothing like that: The public knows to keep a separation between the uniform and politics. “They are hailed as good soldiers,” she says. “I think it’s made people stop and think about actually what was said and done to the Vietnam vet.”
Karen Hon made her own statement about her father’s sacrifice. She joined up, serving 25 years in the National Guard. When she retired a few years back she was a platoon sergeant. It was the same position her father held.
— Chicago Tribune