Wendy
Worrell Nunnally holds a photograph of her mother and father with her as
a baby taken nearly 40 years ago. Her father was killed months later in
Vietnam and Nunnally knew little about him until recently finding his former
best friend now living in Huson.
Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian
Wendy Worrell Nunnally of Missoula was only 18 months
old when her 16-year-old father went to Vietnam. A few months later, he was
killed.
Gary Worrell had joined the service to appease his well-to-do parents, who
would not allow him to marry Wendy's then-18-year-old mother. Their
ultimatum: Either join the military or be disinherited.
So Worrell joined the service. After he died,
his parents severed all ties with Wendy and her mother. And that connection
with the father she barely knew was gone forever.
Or so she thought.
Earlier this month, a family friend found an old acquaintance of Wendy's
father living just up the road from Missoula.
It was the most unlikely of happenstances, one for which she will be forever
thankful.
"I wake up and it's like Christmas again," Wendy, 39, said recently. "The
further it goes, the more amazing it seems."
Wendy's parents met in high school in Placerville, Calif. In her mother's
yearbook, Gary Worrell covered a whole page with a letter to his young love.
But Worrell's parents did not approve of the relationship and issued the
ultimatum when it was clear Gary would not abandon his new daughter and her
mother.
"There was no way he could support mom and me," Wendy said. " 'Let me go do
this,' he said to my mom."
When Gary died, so did any hope of a relationship between Wendy and her
father's parents, who refused to acknowledge their granddaughter.
"Every Christmas I would send a card to them," she said. "When I was 15 or
16, they sent a letter back saying, 'Dear Ms. Worrell, We have nothing of
mutual interest to discuss with you now or in the future.' "
Because Worrell had acknowledged his parentage on her birth certificate,
Wendy received veterans benefits and medical insurance until she married.
But "I never knew much about him," she said.
Wendy has scant physical evidence of her father, either.
She has a rubbing of Gary Worrell's name from the Vietnam Memorial in
Washington, D.C., that her husband Nate made in 1990.
She also has some black-and-white photographs of the young family.
"I was 13 or 14 when we moved to Montana. I found some undeveloped film with
pictures of the three of (us) together," Wendy said.
She also has an old sweatshirt that's much too small for a soldier. The boot
camp sweatshirt has the Marine Corps emblem on the front and Worrell's name
on the back.
Ed Dowse dropped out of high school in Placerville and moved to Los Angeles,
where he worked for a while. He enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in
the Mediterranean and in Europe. Then he got orders to go to Vietnam.
On leave for 30 days before he was to ship out, Dowse returned to
Placerville to look up his best friend - Gary Worrell.
That's when he learned Worrell had died in Vietnam.
"I was pretty broken up about it," he said.
Then, Dowse's orders changed. Instead of Vietnam, he was sent Okinawa. When
it came time to go home, he refused.
"They wanted to ship me home. I said, 'No, I'm going to Vietnam.' They tried
to talk me out of it," Dowse said.
He went to Vietnam, where he served for seven months.
"When I came back, I was pretty screwed up," Dowse said.
He drank and his first two marriages failed. His third marriage, however,
"is the best thing that ever happened to me," he said.
Eventually, Dowse moved to Montana - to Huson, where he got involved with a
memorial flagpole project, and with Combat Veterans International.
That's where Dowse met Rick Davis.
Davis, who has known Wendy and Nate Nunnally for four years, was doing
research on Vietnam, and Wendy asked him to keep an eye out for anything
that might relate to her father. Maybe, she hoped, he could find someone who
had served with her dad.
On the Fourth of July, Davis attended the memorial service near Huson where
Dowse dedicated the new flagpole to veterans of all wars - but especially to
Gary Worrell, his old high school friend who had died in Vietnam.
"When he read the name off, it hit me as somebody I knew," Davis said.
"Gary's paperwork was kept on my desk all the time."
After the ceremony, Davis chatted with Dowse about home, about the '60s,
about Placerville.
"I asked Ed if he knew if Gary had any children," Davis said. "He said no,
he was too young."
Dowse's chin dropped when Davis said he was doing some research for
Worrell's daughter.
Davis called Wendy.
"I told her this flagpole had been dedicated to Gary P. Worrell. I think
maybe he (Dowse) knows your father very well.
"It turned out, of course, it was the same Gary."
Then Dowse got on the phone with Wendy.
"I started talking," he said, "and we hit it off. She's a fabulous person,
just like her dad. He was a fabulous person. That's why we were best
friends."
"We met," Wendy said, "and spent the first five minutes crying."
She showed him pictures of her children: two sons, 22 and 19 years old, and
a 15-year-old daughter. Worrell's grandsons, at 6-foot-5 and 6-foot-8,
inherited his tall stature.
"They take after their grandfather," Wendy said.
Dowse recalled the meeting with emotion.
"Things like this don't happen to me," he said. "They happen in movies."
"Her dad was a good guy. For 16, he knew what was going on. He knew this
child was his," Dowse said.
For Wendy, the meeting with Dowse was doubly satisfying.
"I'm almost happier for Ed. To him, Gary was like a ghost. He didn't know
something was (left of Gary).
"A piece of Gary was still alive," she said.
"To me, this feels like a piece of my past has revived. I never felt it
could go further," Wendy said. "The chances of meeting anyone who knew him
were slim."
Dowse had a special gift for Wendy from the Vietnam memorial in Sacramento,
Calif.
Veterans who wanted it could have leftover slate from the memorial. A friend
of Dowse's got two pieces, one for Dowse and one for Worrell.
"Ed gave the piece to me, a piece he'd had a long time," Wendy said.
She marvels at the confluence of events that led to the meeting with her
father's childhood friend.
"Had Rick not been there, no one would have made the connection," she said.
"It was ordered by God; it happened as it was supposed to."
Davis downplayed his role.
"Everybody was thanking me," he said. "I was just the messenger. This was
meant to be. It is an incredible experience ... pretty wild.
"I'm just so happy for them."
Reporter Donna Syvertson
