In early spring of 2004, when Howard Dean was running for President, my husband Harry sat on the front porch of our Vermont house with a glass of beer and talked about Howard’s younger brother Charlie. Harry had met Charlie in 1968 when they were students at St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island. There were only two hundred students in the boarding school—all boys—and they knew each other well.

Harry had told me about visiting a farm commune some friends had started in Australia. Three friends had dropped out of college—Harvard, Yale, and University of Denver—during protests against the Vietnam War. They traveled in Kenya and drove the coast of Australia. On York Peninsula they purchased 460 acres of land and started a farm commune they dubbed Rosebud.

Harry and Charlie finished college—Harry at Harvard and Charlie at UNC—and in 1973 they joined their friends at Rosebud Farm. After six months of tilling fields, fertilizing with chicken manure, and lots of partying, Harry headed back to the U.S. and Charlie traveled in Southeast Asia, planning the join the Peace Corps the following year.

Although U.S. troops had left Vietnam and Cambodia, Laos was still at war. While Charlie and an Australian friend were traveling on a Mekong riverboat, members of the communist Pathet Lao ordered the boat to dock. Charlie took a picture—his big mistake. For three months he and Neil were held in a rainforest prison camp. In December 1974, they were both executed.

Harry finished his story, put down his beer, and disappeared into the house. He returned with a shoebox filled with letters from Charlie, written from Bangkok and Cambodia, and a journal covered in red leather. I leafed through pages barely holding onto the binding after thirty years and found an almost daily accounting of those days in Australia.

I had met Howard when he was governor of Vermont and when I tracked him down on the campaign trail, he gave me permission to tell his brother’s story. Harry’s journal entries and Charlie’s letters reveal vulnerable young men trying to find themselves. Their privileged families gave them the means to travel the world, buy a large parcel of land, build a 54-foot sailboat, and know that they would never have to be chained to a desk or to scramble for a living. They had the freedom to explore and take risks. But with risks come mistakes born of youthful exuberance. Mistakes must be paid for, and Charlie paid the dearest price.

While In Darkness There Is Light is available from Black Lawrence Press (https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/…) and from Amazon and Barnes & Noble or wherever books are available online.