Cindy Sheehan vs. Betty Skeen

This is a copy of a letter sent by one of our readers to the LA Times.

I would like to express my comments on Cindy Sheehan. My name is Cliff Newman. I was medically retired from the Army Special Forces after losing my leg in Vietnam after 10 years and 26 days. I would like to suggest your newspaper print an article about a lady I know. Her name is Betty Skeen. She is my girl friend’s mother. She, like Cindy Sheehan, is also a Gold Star Mother. Making my girl friend, and her sister, Gold Star Sisters. As it happens I met her and my girl friend through her son, Dale Dehnke. Dale was the One Zero of a MACV SOG Recon Team operating in Laos during the Vietnam conflict. He was a friend of mine. He is now buried in Oak Park Cemetery in Chatsworth next to his father who committed suicide over his grave when he was returned from Vietnam in a casket. Obviously he was a little distraught over his son’s death also. But, unlike Cindy Sheehan, Betty Skeen has enough common sense, character and dignity to realize that the President of the United States has a few more important things to do than to meet with her and explain why her son, who was a professional soldier, was killed in combat, which was an assumed risk of his job. Betty’s second husband, by the way, now gone also, was a veteran of the 101^st Airborne Division in WWII. He was a motor officer with the LAPD.

Betty Skeen was, and still is, extremely proud of her son, would not denigrate his memory by making a spectacle of herself and insulting his memory and those of countless millions who have died in the name of our great freedom, as taken for granted by all too many. There is an adage, ironically, by a 19^th Century British philosopher, John Stuart Mill that says, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing, which he cares more about than is personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

Sadly, this poor woman who has now obviously been caught up in her celebrity and cause, is, along with those who are prodding her, one of those “miserable creatures.” God bless her for producing a son who obviously was a better person than her, however, if you are going to publicize mothers who have suffered losses, I would suggest locating ladies like Betty Skeen. There are a lot of them out there.