A veteran’s long journey from grief to grace
By Jerry Grillo
White County News
Roger Rosdahl didn’t learn his best friend’s name until he found it etched in black granite. He’d been searching the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. — The Wall. But he kept coming up empty.
“I was looking for the wrong name,” says Rosdahl. “He was Little John, and I was Robin Hood. I was looking for John Killmon. I never knew his name was Frederick.”
They were young Marines fighting a war. They had 11 days left in Vietnam when Fred was killed on a jungle trail, never having met his infant daughter back home in Maryland.
“I made the decision to send them up there,” Roger says quietly. “It wasn’t more than a couple minutes before we heard the shots — bam, bam.”
Roger was leading a platoon that had seen more than its share of combat. His lieutenant was wounded, and the 19-year-old was now leading 25 men on a patrol into a mountainous jungle. Fred and another Marine, Harry Adams, volunteered to set up booby traps on a high trail that the enemy was expected to traverse.
“I suggested we send some new guys, but they said, ‘no, no, no, we’ve gotta go.’ So I sent them,” says Roger, who has regretted his decision, but knows there wasn’t an alternative. He knew these men. He knew their hearts.
After hearing the shots, Roger and several others climbed the steep hill. Little John had been hit and was lying on the ground, bleeding from his head and leg.
“I held him in the last moments of his life,” Roger says. “He died in my arms.”
Fred had recently turned 20.
A President’s Plea
For Roger, the inspiration to serve came from the mouth of a president who also had served.
“My parents had the TV on, and I heard President Kennedy saying, ‘ask not what your country can do for you …’ You know the speech,” says Roger, who must be one of the few people living in White County who grew up in North Dakota. “I thought, ‘that’s what I want to do, I want to serve my country.’”
At 18, he was a Marine. At 19, he was a battle-hardened veteran who had lost too many brothers. But when Little John was killed, it dawned heavily on Roger that an entire future had been eliminated.
“When a soldier gives his life,” Roger says, “it is not just the sacrifice of his young life that is given, but the sacrifice of everything that he would have experienced if he had come home. That’s the real sacrifice.”
Fred’s daughter, Marilyn, was only nine months old when her father died. She was adopted soon after and raised not far from where Fred’s parents lived in Maryland — unknowingly, just two doors down.
But something inside her always felt drawn to the Killmons, whom she called Mom-mom and Pop. At nine years old, she asked her adoptive family, “Can I adopt Mom-mom and Pop as my grandparents?”
She didn’t know they already were.
New Daughter
Roger didn’t learn about Marilyn until decades later. He responded to his war experience like many others, like someone who had been broken. He drank, kept his pain out of reach.
“It took me about 20 years of drinking,” he admits, “before I could even think about trying to find her.”
Meeting and marrying Melanie made all the difference. Roger got sober, and Melanie — they’ve been married 37 years — drove the search forward. She found a comment from one of Fred’s cousins, saying, “Fred, you would be so proud of your daughter.” That led them to the cousin and eventually to Marilyn.
And when they did find her — when they finally made contact — Roger couldn’t speak.
“The first time she called our house, she was supposed to be calling to talk to my husband,” says Melanie. “He said, ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’ So, for four months, she called every week. She told me what to say to him, and I passed it on.”
The tsunami of memory was overwhelming. Even when the moment came for them to finally meet, Roger collapsed in the elevator, sobbing. And she spoke like a drill instructor to her old Marine husband, coaxing him to get up. He did.
Upstairs, Marilyn was waiting. Roger saw Little John in his 30-something year-old woman’s eyes. They held each other for 10 full minutes. Everyone cried, even Marilyn’s husband.
“She’s like my daughter now,” Roger says. “Her kids — they’re my grandkids.”
The family’s story could have ended there, but it didn’t. Out of that reunion came the Killmon Foundation. Named for Fred, it funds college scholarships for kids interested in going into the military, healthcare, or the ministry, or kids from families with those backgrounds. It seems fitting. Marilyn, the daughter of a Marine who died in combat, grew up to become a minister.
For Roger, the foundation is a way to give meaning to a loss that once made him feel empty, a way to turn trauma into purpose.
With another Memorial Day coming, he’ll reflect on his long life without Fred Killmon, and on the sacrifice of so many others, on all the futures that never happened. But he’ll find solace, because Robin Hood found a way to connect with Little John.
“I found his little girl,” Roger says. “And I made her my little girl. And now, we’re family.”