Local residents working to bring Vietnam Wall replica to Franklin
All of the sudden, the letters stopped coming.
Kathy Ballou didn’t think much of it. As a young Girl Scout, she had been pen pals with a U.S. Army soldier from Alabama, Sgt. Larry Joseph Purcell, who was serving in Vietnam at the time. She would send him news from the United States, as well as packets of Kool-Aid that he requested to make the muddy water where he was stationed bearable to drink. The whole idea was to thank him for his service.
When her letters didn’t get any reply, Ballou figured Purcell had been discharged, or had been transferred to another base. Only years later did she learn that he had been killed in 1968.