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TI: So while you were in Vietnam, Maynard and Brian were back in Maryland.

LH: That's correct. But they had an option. Foreign service officers were allowed to have their families in Hong Kong, Manila, four or five Southeast Asian countries, so that you wouldn't be that far away from each other and then you can visit them more frequently, because they weren't allowed in country, in Vietnam. But Maynard and Brian, as she told you, she had a medical hold on her. So did Brian, he had severe nosebleeds and asthma. And so they couldn't move to one of those third countries, so they remained in Maryland, and I visited two or three times during that period.

TI: And so when you would come back to Maryland after being gone for so long, how would you reestablish, what are some examples of you reestablishing a connection with your son?

LH: Well, I would say it was easy for me, but difficult for him because he missed me so much. We were always buddies. I don't know if Maynard said it on camera, but she was never attuned to children. She was good with Brian and loved him deeply, and had a good relationship with him, but as she admitted, the mother instinct in her is, I guess, deeply buried, but showed enough of it to Brian that he had a happy life with it. But he missed me so much because I was not only his father, I was his buddy, and we did everything together. And so when I left and he was five or six, too young to realize how long I would be gone, I said I would be gone for five months before I came back again. So I visited Seattle, and I was staying here with Maynard's older sister's family, and I'd talk to him, "Daddy, when are you coming home?" [Laughs] I said, "Brian, I haven't even left the country yet. But it was very difficult for him to adjust to that, my being away, my visiting for two or three weeks, going back and being gone again for another five months or so. And it just so happened that when I finished Vietnam, they came out to Seattle, and I, from Vietnam, went to Seattle. And I had a big party for my mother's eightieth birthday and Brian's eighth birthday. It almost coincided. And it was soon thereafter that, back in Maryland, he was so interested in writing, he would dictate television scripts to me, and I would type them out, and we would send it. The name was Beasly, I don't know what TV station in Washington, and we would get feedback from him. None of them was ever utilized, but he still has those scripts.

TI: That's a good story, given, especially now that he's a screenwriter.

LH: Screenwriter and director.

TI: And director.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.