During the year before my brother died, he was a ghostwriter. He was working on a book about Grant Wolfkill, an NBC cameraman and former prisoner of the Pathet Lao whose helicopter was shot down in Laos in 1961. Wolfkill had a book contract with Simon and Schuster, and he hired my brother to write his story.

My brother, Jerry Rose, was a journalist, working in Vietnam in the early 1960s. He had an unusual background. He was a painter and a writer, with a Masters’ Degree from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. His short stories were published in literary magazines. He was working on a novel.

He stumbled into a career as a journalist and was very good at it. His stories on Vietnam and other parts of Asia, with his own photographs, regularly appeared in the major news media of the time.

I think working on the Wolfkill book appealed to my brother as a writer. It was a gripping story of courage. Grant provided the material—dictating his memories into a tape recorder. Jerry used this material to craft the book into a story that flowed like a novel.

The book, titled Reported to be Alive, was published in the summer of 1965, praised in a review in The New York Times Book Review: “The characters stand out as vividly as the events…”

But Jerry was restless. He was working on a semi-autobiographical novel set in Vietnam—this was his own story. But his other work got in the way, and he kept putting aside his novel.

My brother died in September 1965 in a plane crash in Vietnam. He left behind a wife, two young children, paintings, photographs, journals, letters, and various other writings, published and unpublished. His wife, Kay, who had been a secretary in the American Embassy in Saigon and worked with Jerry on his manuscripts, carefully organized and preserved all his papers.

Although Kay and I never lived in the same city, we visited as often as we could. Jerry’s paintings and photographs lined the walls of her large house in Alexandria, Virginia. She had a room in her basement with file cabinets full of his writings.

***

My brother was eleven years older than me, almost a quasi-father. He was my mentor and guide. He read poetry to me when I was a little girl. When I was a teenager, he gave me reading lists—classical literature and poetry. He encouraged me to write and  critiqued my writing. He sent me long letters, full of big brotherly advice. A week before he died, he sent me a five-page letter with advice for my future. I was about to get married and he encouraged me to have a professional career of my own. This was in 1965, when professional careers for women were not at all common.

I first had the idea of writing a book about my brother a long time ago, around 1990. My reasons were complex. I loved him; this was a way to honor his memory. But more than that, I thought his story was intriguing. Other books on Vietnam were coming out—but many were from the perspective of soldiers. His story was different, about a young man who launched a career as a journalist in Vietnam.

My first draft was a biography. I was a social scientist then, so I approached this like I would other research projects. I put his words in quotes, as I discussed and analyzed his life and career.

I completed a draft quickly, working in and around my research career. But it needed a lot of work, and I ran out of time. I needed to return to my fulltime career as a researcher. I put the manuscript aside—for decades.

By the time I returned to this project, I was at a very different stage in my life. I was older and retired from research. I had launched a new career as an artist and writer. I led an art group, took courses in creative nonfiction, and published an award-winning picture book for adults.

I re-created this book as creative nonfiction. It was a labor of love. I wrote and edited and rewrote—maybe one hundred versions or more.

I made an unusual choice. I wrote almost the whole book in my brother’s voice, first person, present tense. I wanted him to tell his own story—as his memoir. My brother’s journals and letters were often exquisitely written. I used his own words, wherever possible. I filled the parts of the narrative that were missing from my imagination.

This was a collaboration. Because my brother had been my mentor in writing, it was as if he had trained me for a task that neither of us would have anticipated. I listed us as co-authors, with his name first.

I had become my brother’s ghostwriter, writing the book that he would have written if he had lived.  As I wrote my brother’s book, it was as if he were sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear.

Our book is being published in Fall 2020—almost exactly 55 years after his death.

I’m not a religious person. I don’t really believe in ghosts or an afterlife. But if our souls should meet in the Great Beyond, I think my brother would ask: “What took you so long?”

THE JOURNALIST: Life and Loss in America’s Secret War by Jerry A. Rose and Lucy Rose Fischer will be published by SparkPress in August 2020. This true story captures the dramatic and perilous life of a young journalist in Vietnam during the very early years of America’s Vietnam War. His sister has drawn on her late brother’s journals, letters, and other writings to craft his memoir.