DETAILS:
- Date: May 26, 3 – 4 p.m.
- Location: Ojai Library, 111 East Ojai Avenue, Ojai | Map
- Featured Readers:
Authors & Readers:
Jan Christian, author of Leave No Brother Behind: A Sister’s War Memoir.
On April 11, 1969, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Christian, Jr. was killed in Vietnam. In 2005, an unexpected email connected his sister to others still haunted by that day. Together they learned that going back can change the way we go forward.
Over 200,000 U.S. families had members killed, wounded or lost in the war. Over 2.5 million U.S. military personnel served in Vietnam and came back forever changed. Jan’s experiences of the last few years have convinced her that the Vietnam War is still, as several Marines put it, “a raw wound” for many Americans. It is a raw wound for those who went and for those who stayed behind, for those who supported the war and for those who protested it. The book, she says, “aims to be part of the healing.”
Along the way, Christian learned of a son named after her brother and her brother’s last words. She made contact not only with other Marines, but with a former North Vietnamese Army soldier and the sister of the other Marine killed that day.
“This journey has taken me to Marine Corps reunions, to a rice paddy in Vietnam, to my childhood home and into the recesses of my memory and my heart to look with new eyes at my brother, his death, and the ways his life and death shaped my life’s work and world view. | The Marine Corps motto is Semper Fidelis: Always Faithful. Along the way, I learned new lessons about faithfulness, about the healing that can come when we seek opening instead of closure, and about the sacrifices that peace — no less than war — requires. I learned what it really means to leave no brother behind.” - Jan Christian
About Jan Christian
After working for years in Arizona’s justice and social services systems and teaching public policy at Arizona State University, the author became ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister and serves a congregation in Ventura, California. She holds an undergraduate degree in American History and a Master of Counseling degree from Arizona State University and a Master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion. For more information about Leave No Brother Behind: A Sister’s War Memoir, visit www.sistersmemoir.com or contact Jan Christian at 805.653.0134 or at uujj@aol.com.
