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Terry Drown

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Terry Drown, left, played on the basketball team at the University of Maine at Fort Kent with Bill Breton, a close friend. Drown had decided to go into teaching after college but was drafted before he could take his final elective course.

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Edna Drown holds a plaque honoring the induction of her son, Terry Drown, into the Athletic Hall of Fame at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

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Terry Drown was buried in the Arundel Cemetery after being killed in Vietnam in 1969. The town still shows support for his family.

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Terry Drown, extreme left, served in Vietnam from February 1969 until his death four months later.

Download and read Terry's last letter home from Vietnam.

Western Union telegram to Terry's parents from the Department of the Army.

Senator Muskie's letter of condolence.

President Nixon's letter of condolence.

 

 

ARUNDEL — Edna Drown knew in an instant that her son, Terry, had been killed in Vietnam.

"An Army car drove in the door yard," she recalled. "The minute that it started in the door yard, I knew. They didn't have to tell me."

She dropped to her knees. The rest is a blur.

It was June 16, 1969. Her eldest child, her only boy, was gone, his life taken by a land mine five days earlier. He was 24.

Forty years later, on Wednesday morning, two men traveled from the University of Maine at Fort Kent with news of another kind.

Through the drizzling rain, they carried an engraved granite plaque commemorating Terry Drown's recent induction into the university's Athletic Hall of Fame for his finesse on the basketball court.

They also carried the diploma that Drown was three credits shy of getting when he marched with his graduating class in May 1968. Drown was drafted shortly after the ceremony, so he wasn't able to take the one elective course he needed to complete his bachelor's degree in elementary education.

With Drown's induction into the Athletic Hall of Fame, university officials decided that it was time to count his service and sacrifice in Vietnam and grant the degree posthumously, said Terence Kelly, the university's director of communications.

Kelly and Richard Cost, university president, delivered the diploma to Edna Drown in the living room of her cozy home on Drown Lane, where she and her late husband, Elmore, lived most of their lives, raised a family and grieved for their son.

"It's time we made it final," Cost said in giving the diploma to Drown. "That indeed, not only did he march, but he actually did graduate from the University of Maine at Fort Kent."

Drown, now 89, and her daughter, Betsy Chadbourne, were expecting the sports award. The diploma was a surprise.

"Oh, that's wonderful," Drown said, holding the diploma in her lap. "That's wonderful to have."

Cost said he felt compelled to deliver the plaque and the diploma in person, making a 700-mile round trip from the northern tip of Maine to the state's southern coast.

"This was important closure, both for the family and for the university," Cost said. "It's also an important part of understanding the human side of what we do and what was lost when Terry Drown was killed. He was prepared to be an absolutely amazing teacher and that was cut short, so we all share in that loss."

Drown wrote an essay about his calling to become a teacher in his application to the university.

"Most of my summers I spent caddying at the local golf course," he wrote. "I am now employed at a garage as a body and fender repair man. ... During my senior year (at Kennebunk High School), I realized I would never be satisfied as a garage man. I decided that I would be more willing to give myself to a profession such as teaching, more than I would at any other job. ... Young people need to be guided in the right direction and I want to help them."

Instead, Drown was at boot camp by September 1968 and in Vietnam by February 1969. Like most soldiers, he counted the days until his next furlough and when he'd be stateside for good. He looked forward to letters and newspapers from home and care packages filled with paperback books, Kool-Aid mix and film for his camera.

In his last letter to his folks, written on June 7, 1969, Drown prodded his father to write more often, told his mother that she was his "favorite" and wished that he could attend his sister's graduation, which was set for June 13.

A big man – he stood 6-foot-4 – Drown defended his expression of boyish emotions. "I'm me and it's almost too late to change."

Drown wrote the letter at night, from a hilltop, surrounded by trip flares that would go off if Viet Cong troops approached.

"As usual, the weather is wet, but not that bad once you get used to it," he wrote....