Rhonda Jo McLean was 5 years old the last time she saw her father in 1967. She remembers watching out the window of the family station wagon as an airplane carried him to a faraway place called Vietnam.
Her father died three months later while flying a reconnaissance mission for the U.S. Army.
What followed for her was a childhood with little room for the past.
McLean lived in nine cities and towns across Washington, Colorado, and Wyoming as her mother remarried several times. Her father’s death was rarely discussed.
The memory of her father faded, and so did her understanding of what his death stood for.
Then an old leather suitcase surfaced in a storage unit in Riverton, Wyoming, in 2014.
Inside were reel‑to‑reel tapes the family had sent back and forth during her father’s time in Vietnam — voices recorded by her mother Ruthie, her siblings Bill and Shawn, herself, and her father, Capt. William Graves, then 27.
Soon after, Rhonda sat with her sister, Shawn, in Shawn’s living room, a digitized copy of the tapes queued up on a home stereo. But they hesitated.
“We just sat and waited there for a while. It was really hard to hit the ‘play’ button,” said McLean.
She was frozen by a sudden memory.
It was the night she woke to the sound of her sister sobbing beside her in bed and McLean learned that her father was gone.
Now, 47 years later, she was crying beside her sister again.
“Her and I both had tears. I’m really glad we were together when we listened to it,” she said, explaining her initial reaction to both her father’s voice and her own.
“Just hearing daddy’s voice was overwhelming, because I didn’t remember it,” she said, “Then I said, ‘How cute my sweet little voice is!’”
The recordings stirred old memories, but for McLean, they also felt like discovery.
It was a chance to understand her family’s story in a way she couldn’t have as a child.
William Graves, back left, and his siblings. (Courtesy Linda Fabian) 
William Graves, left, and his family before he was sent to Vietnam in 1967. (Courtesy Linda Fabian)
Who Was William Edward Graves?
Before he was Capt. William Edward Graves, U.S. Army, he was Bill from Douglas — a popular football player with handsome dark eyes and charming confidence, according to his youngest sister, Linda Fabian.
He’d always wanted to fly airplanes. As a teenager, he liked to pretend his 1940s‑era Ford coupe was an airplane, revving the engine as though it were preparing for takeoff.
He lied about his age to join the National Guard at 17. He married his high school sweetheart Ruthie a year later. By 22, they had three children.
He enlisted and went to Officer Candidate School in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and learned to fly at Fort Lewis, Washington.
He was 27 years old when he deployed to Vietnam as an Army pilot.
Even in war, Graves held on to humor and assurance. By the time his youngest daughter could hear those qualities, she was older than he ever lived to be.
“Rhonda … you’d really be a prize over here, young lady, cuz all the people over in this part of the world have very dark, black hair,” said Graves in one of the recordings.
“If I brought you over here with your blond hair and that long ponytail, I bet I could sell you for … oh, I’ll bet I could get at least 5 or 10 dollars for you. What do you think about that?”
The Tapes
The tapes do not document the war so much as capture a family’s best efforts to preserve normalcy and connection in the face of uncertainty and separation.
What matters most is often not what is said, but how it is said, as well as what is deliberately left out.
Graves used his voice the way some people use their hands to steady what might otherwise tip.
“You know kids, a long, long time ago, the American people … fought wars too because they wanted to be free — they wanted to be democratic," he said, explaining the meaning of his absence in a soft and fatherly tone. "They had wars with England and different people and they established a real nice government — and that’s what we have now.
“But the South Vietnamese people don’t have this kind of freedom and that’s what we’re trying to help them get. So, we’ll fight their war and we’ll help them all we can.”
He explains things patiently, like relative humidity, and names outposts as if they were towns a few miles down Interstate 25 from Douglas, as if simple explanations might keep fear at bay.
He makes only one admission of danger.
“We have a lot of bugs over here. It’s worse than Fort Rucker,” he said. “Daddy stands around here half the time with his spray can, but the Army spray isn’t too good.
"Shawn, you and Billy and Rhonda go down and you can get Daddy a can of Black Flag bug spray and send that to me one of these times.”
The children respond in kind, filling the tapes with school, summer camp, and the small achievements they hope will make him smile.
“I’ve been trying to be good, but I said naughty words,” said an 8-year-old Shawn. "I’m trying not to say ‘em’ anymore."
A rubbing of the name of Capt. William Graves of Douglas, Wyoming, from the Vietnam War Memorial wall. He was killed in Vietnam in 1967. (Courtesy Linda Fabian) 
Capt. William Graves is on the Vietnam War Memorial wall. (Courtesy Linda Fabian)
Strain Slips Through
The tapes also capture exchanges between Graves and his wife, Ruthie.
Despite their effort to project normalcy, her strain occasionally slips through. Beyond the logistics of managing a household, her voice carries the longing of a young marriage held far apart.
“I don’t like making tapes, but I sure like playing yours,” Ruthie said.
Graves jokes about reaching out for her in the night, but finding the wall of his bunk instead. The humor turns to teasing.
“Keep the bed warm and Daddy will be home one of these days,” he tells her, laughing. “Maybe when we go to Hawaii, I’ll show you that little trick I learned over here in the Orient — how’s that?”
Ruthie answers in tones that are playful, a little jealous, and clearly aware of the vast distance between them. In one exchange, she scolds him for getting too familiar with other women.
“What do you mean teaching some girl to shine your boots?” she asks. “I’m just so mad I could chew up nails and spit out tacks. I’m the only one that’s supposed to get to shine those beside you.
“Those are my boots, fella. You just be careful there or I’ll getcha.”
Despite his confidence and humor, Graves’ vulnerability also surfaces.
“I’m starting to get worried the other way,” he said. “You’re getting so darn good at doing things by yourself you won’t want me to come back."
A moment later, the tone softens again. “I love you very, very much and I miss you … gobs! And I think I probably love you more than you love me.”
As a child, the subtext drifted past their youngest daughter, Rhonda. But hearing these exchanges as an adult, she feels like she’s come to understand her parents more fully.
“It’s a really neat experience,” McLean said. “I would have never known him like this if not for the tapes.”
Silence After Loss
The tapes didn’t only change how Graves’ children understand him. They also reopened the past for his sisters, who experienced the loss in a different way.
Linda Fabian, Graves’ youngest sister, was the first to rediscover the recordings after a fire damaged a relative’s storage unit in Riverton.
Fabian remembers sitting with her sister, Georgia Moore, in the office of Wyoming historian Sue Castaneda when she heard her brother’s voice play back for the first time.
“It really took our breath away. It seemed surreal,” Fabian said. “I thought, ‘Wow, are we lucky to get to hear the voice one more time!'”
The Graves grew up tight-knit in a small house — four kids, two parents, one bathroom — and the sense of tightness is what made hearing Bill’s voice again feel so powerful. The moment brought a rush of memories.
Fabian thought of her brother lying on the living room couch in Douglas, letting a friend tattoo him while their parents were away.
Then came the smell of smoke that clung to his clothes when he returned from fighting wildfires with the National Guard.
“I can distinctly remember one time when he came home and I was so excited to see him,” Fabian said. “I was crying, and I ran and jumped in his arms. I can still smell the smoke.”
That closeness is also what made Graves' loss so devastating, said Georgia Moore.
“My mother said that if there was a hell, it was right on earth when we lost him,” Moore said. "I'll never forget that ever. And I still think about him every day.”
Though they thought of him often, they rarely spoke of him, said Fabian, as though acknowledging the loss outwardly would make it harder to bear.
An item in the Aug. 2, 1967, edition of the Casper Star-Tribune after the death of Capt. William Graves in Vienam. (Courtesy Linda Fabian) 
Nearly 50 years after Capt. William Graves of Douglas, Wyoming, died in Vietnam, his family discovered reel-to-reel recordings he sent home. “Just hearing daddy’s voice was overwhelming,” said a daughter about a new perspective she could never have appreciated as a child. (Courtesy Linda Fabian) 
Military documents for Capt. William Graves. (Courtesy Linda Fabian)
‘If I Could Go Back'
Hearing her brother’s voice decades later made her wonder if the pain might have been eased if they’d talked more openly.
“It's sad when I think about it: I don’t think I ever had a real heart-to-heart talk with my mom or dad about how terrible it was,” said Fabian. “If I could go back, I would have that talk in a minute.”
She said that after hearing his voice again, she’s been emboldened to speak out for veterans.
Listening to the tapes has changed how she relates to the loss now nearly 60 years later. Fabian says she’s more willing to speak openly, not just within her family, but publicly as well.
“I’m much more able to tell people about my brother,” she said. “If there’s a ceremony somewhere, I stand up as a Gold Star sister. I want people to know that they know someone who is personally affected by that war.”
Not everyone in the family has wanted to hear the tapes again, including Ruthie and her son, Bill, who shares his father’s name.
“My mom never listened to it. My brother still will not listen to it,” said McLean. “Maybe (my brother) felt like he didn’t live up to daddy’s expectations. I’m not sure because we never really discussed it.”
Whatever Capt. William Edward Graves' expectations for his son, the tapes show his deep affection.
“Tell that son of mine that I’ll be real glad to get back and do things with him too. I don’t know why, I miss all the kids, but I sure as hell miss that boy! He’s kind of a funny little fella … kind of gets to me,” Graves said on the last tape he ever sent home.
“I always carry that little ‘wishnik' that he gave me. I never fly anyplace without it. I carry it in my pocket anytime we fly and take off around the area — that little thing from Bill.”
The full transcript and recordings of Capt. William Edward Graves’ tapes with his family can be found at Wyoming State Archives under the project title “How Are You Doing in Vietnam?" produced by Sue Castaneda.
Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.
