Last modified: Sat Nov 22 12:18:26 EST 2003
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| Howard Dean's brother Charlie |
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By RICK LYMAN
Published: November 19, 2003
When those closest to Howard Dean try to explain what transformed the somewhat directionless young man into a driven family man, they frequently light upon the unexplained disappearance of his beloved brother Charlie in violence-ravaged Laos in 1974 at the height of the Vietnam War.
Charlie, 16 months younger than Howard, had been the more outgoing and politically active sibling. That he was adventurous enough to go on a prolonged journey through Southeast Asia in 1974 surprised no one.
The puzzle for Charles Dean's parents and three surviving brothers, who were so devastated by his disappearance that they almost never discussed it, was what made him take a boat down the Mekong River toward Vietnam and what happened to him.
"We never discussed it," said his mother, Andree M. Dean. "But I'm sure it had a pretty big impact on him. All this stuff about Howard later going to grief counseling? I never knew that."
Only at the beginning of his campaign for president did Dr. Dean reveal that he sought professional counseling to overcome his grief at his brother's death.
In a recent interview before the discovery this week of what may be his brother's remains in Laos, Dr. Dean spoke about the disappearance, the family's search for answers and the effect it had on them.
"Charlie and I wrote back and forth a lot as he traveled abroad," Dr. Dean recalled. "I remember receiving a letter that he was sitting on the veranda of this little cottage that he's rented for a few months in Vientiane. At night, he said, he could watch the flashes of the artillery in the suburbs and hear the thump of the shells. I felt like writing him, `What in the hell are you doing over there? Get out of there.' "
Their father, also named Howard Dean, made the first trip to Laos to investigate a few months after Charlie's disappearance. Mrs. Dean took a trip in early 1975. By then the war was drawing to a close and the search was beginning for those missing. The family contacted the military and embassy officials responsible for the searches, as well as others in Laos and Washington, and maintained that contact over the decades.
Eventually, Dr. Dean and his family concluded that Charlie had been captured in the jungle by Pathet Lao rebels and then held for some weeks before being turned over to the North Vietnamese, who killed him. Dr. Dean came to that conclusion following a trip to Laos in 2002, during his final year as governor of Vermont.
"It turned out to be a catharsis," Dr. Dean said. "That's not the way I planned it. It snuck up on me that way."
His mother said she thought Charlie's death had been working away at Dr. Dean over the years. "When he got the chance to go to Laos himself, I think it was a chance to get to the bottom of it once and for all," Mrs. Dean said.
Before, he could not understand what had made his brother go down that river. "But once I got there, I understood it immediately," Dr. Dean said. "It was an incredibly beguiling place. Sweet, nice, gentle people. And the landscape is surprising. There is no place like it on earth. When I got there, I instantly understood what was going on. I knew why he went down that river."
Dr. Dean visited Vientiane and took a helicopter up the Mekong to the point where the authorities believed his brother had been killed. He found a belated peace of mind.
"It didn't bring Charlie back, but it helped to know, certainly, what was going on," Dr. Dean said. "It was not an unknown world to us. We knew what the likely options were. We knew how he was likely killed, even if we weren't exactly sure. And we knew he wasn't alive."
Growing up, the brothers divided up two by two, Mrs. Dean said: the older two, Howard and Charlie, and then Bill and Jim, four and five years younger.
At St. George's School in Middletown, R.I., which all four Dean boys attended, Charlie was more likely to get into mischief than his older brother and more politically conscious.
After he graduated from the University of North Carolina, Charlie worked in the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern, and it was Mr. McGovern's resounding defeat that spurred Charlie to begin his round-the-world trip.
"Charlie, well, I was certain he'd be involved in something political," Jim Dean said. "He'd been leafleting. First, he was for Nixon. Then, he changed his attitude a lot. He was an organizer, the one we all thought really had a clear direction."
Ernie Robson, a classmate of Dr. Dean's at Yale, said: "Those of us who knew Charlie would have pegged him as the politician in the family. He was more friendly, outgoing, not as shy, not as reserved."
It is tempting, therefore, to seize upon Charlie Dean's death — coming just a few months after Howard Dean had taken the first steps toward a career in medicine — as the seminal event in transforming the young Howard from a rudderless partier into the sober, directed man who built a medical practice and family in an adopted state he then led as governor.
"What happened to Charlie, I think it intensified the urge in Howard to make a difference," said Ralph Dawson, a Yale roommate. "To do something that counts, rather than just making money."
Mrs. Dean is certain Charlie's death had a great deal to do with the transformation. "I guess Howard realized that he couldn't afford to fiddle around anymore," she said.
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