Take Care of the Others
Most of what we keep is just stuff. Some of it isn't.
My sisters and I spent several months going through our parents' house after our mother passed in March 2025. Every room held decades of accumulated life, and most of it had long since lost meaning. We sorted, we donated, we made decisions about things that had stopped meaning anything long before we arrived.
Then we found what our father had kept about Lt. Morgan William Weed.
Morgan Weed was 25 years old, a native of Decatur, Alabama, and a graduate of Athens College. His friends called him Slick. He arrived in Vietnam on January 5, 1970, on the same plane as our father. They trained together at the Go Devil Academy before Weed was assigned to D Company on January 20th. He was married to Caroline. He was expecting his first child. His promotion to First Lieutenant was due the day he died. Their first wedding anniversary was that same day.
On May 10, 1970, D Company was operating in Ph Tnaot, Cambodia, when they encountered an entrenched North Vietnamese company. The 2nd Platoon was pinned in a ditch under heavy fire. Realizing the position his men were in, Lt. Weed voluntarily brought essential ammunition forward from his own 3rd Platoon sector, moving directly into the kill zone. He exposed himself to enemy fire to relieve the pressure on the pinned squad, throwing grenades into North Vietnamese Army (NVA) bunkers to suppress their fire and allow the trapped men to withdraw. During the firefight, he was struck in the back and head. As his men carried him to the medical evacuation helicopter in a poncho liner, he remained conscious. His last words were: "I'll be all right, take care of the others."
1LT Morgan William Weed died of his wounds on May 13, 1970. He was posthumously recommended for the Silver Star. Two days later, D Company held a memorial service at Fire Support Base (FSB) Keaton, Ben Luc, Vietnam. One hundred and thirty men cried at sundown as a bugler played taps. His daughter, Stephanie Carol Weed, was born two weeks after he died.
Morgan Weed was not the only man D Company lost in Cambodia. SSG Cliff Macomber and SP4 John Lonsdale were killed in the same operation. Our father carried that too.
Our father brought it all home. Two newspaper clippings, a letter from Caroline, and a letter from Morgan's father. Our father passed in 2014. Our mother knew the documents were there and knew they were important. She kept them for eleven more years. In a house full of everything else, those documents were not everything else.
In February of this year, I sent digital copies to American Legion Post 15 in Decatur AL with a note explaining what our father had preserved. The response from their Communications Officer arrived the next morning. He thanked our family for preserving and sending them to his hometown.
A man’s life mattered. Our father acted like it did. Our mother made sure the evidence survived. Now I have them.
If anyone reading this knows the Weed family, I would be glad to mail the originals to surviving family members. If they are never located, the documents will stay with our family. Because they matter.
The Lowe Down
Most of us will sort through a house someday, or have already. The hard part is not the sorting. It is making sure the people you love never have to guess what mattered to you. Our father knew. Our mother knew. The harder work is acting on that before someone else has to figure it out.
It’s a no brainer.
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