Youth: Unanswered Questions

Life was never dull for Dwight Hall Owen Jr. By the time he was a sophomore at Stanford University, gangling (6 ft. 4½ in.), energetic “Dee” Owen had fought forest fires in the West, mined gold in Honduras, motor-scoot-ered through Europe, and worked his way to Viet Nam. There, as a free lance newspaper correspondent, he be came something of a hero by shooting it out with the Viet Cong when the 1st Infantry patrol he was accompanying was ambushed north of Saigon (TIME, Dec. 17, 1965).

Owen was so fascinated by the military and civil war for South Viet Nam that he signed up at 19 as the youngest assistant province representative with U.S. AID. Owen spent nine months in the countryside working directly with Vietnamese peasants, earned their respect for his bravery and understanding of their needs. “The U.S. taxpayer pays me,” he used to say, “but I am working for the guy in the paddy.”

The eldest of three sons of a well-to-do Rhode Island family, Owen last fall returned to Stanford, where he smoothly resumed his studies, zestfully plunged into the social whirl and earned a commendable 3.2 grade average. But all the while, he could not forget the challenges of Viet Nam. “There’s a world of reality out there,” he wrote a friend, “and sometimes it makes this one seem strange.”

Not even the joys of Christmas-partying could dampen his curiosity about Viet Nam. “I couldn’t help contrasting it with the Christmas before,” he wrote later. “As much as I was enjoying myself, I knew even then that I would have to return to Viet Nam. There are simply too many unanswered questions for me there, and I’ll have to go looking for them.”

In July, Owen returned to Viet Nam. As an adviser to that nation’s Revolutionary Development Program, he was assigned to work with villagers in Viet Cong-infested Quang Ngai province, 300 miles northeast of Saigon. Fortnight ago, Owen and three other Americans volunteered to drive from Quang Ngai City four miles to a coastal hamlet to warn U.S. and Vietnamese co-workers that Viet Cong had attacked the city and were believed still to be lurking in the area. On the way back, the Jeep was ambushed. Taking cover in a cornfield, Owen and his companions were bombarded by a Viet Cong mortar barrage. One round exploded near Owen. Stunned, he staggered to his feet and was fatally shot through the heart. Dee Owen would have been 22 next February.