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Show Sunday, October 1, Navy veteran's By VERN ANDERSON Associated Press Writer SALT LAKE CITY Nancy Fife never doubted her husband had been scarred in mind and body by his Viet Cong captors. The incident with the tennis shoes was all the proof she needed. Though it happened nearly 20 years ago it remains etched in her memory. Even the manuscript her husband left when he died this 449 pages of vivid Vietsummer nam experience had less impact than the night she donned tennis shoes to flee her threatening spouse. The sneakers seemed to drive Robert Fife berserk. Fife's captors used to wear tennis shoes when they came to his bamboo cage to beat and urinate on him, he told her later. The enemy soldier he strangled when he escaped was shod in canvas, too. Nancy Fife is no fool, but that's how Robert Fife played her for 23 years of marriage. The heroic identity, adopted to cover a lifetime of failure, was shattered only when his widow tried to have Fife's name included on the state's Vietnam War memorial, using a letter from his therapist as part of her evidence. '"He was clearly depressed, angry, alienated from people and viewed the world in a very negative manner as a result of his military service experiences, particularly as a prisoner of war," Dr. Corydon Hammond had written after the Navy veteran died June 24 of carbon monoxide poisoning. Hammond's evaluation was based on the story told him by Fife about life as a tarnished and troubled war hero. Fife knew the friends and relatives he mistreated had to take that into account. They needn't have. Fife had never been to Vietnam. Hammond's letter, written at the unsuspecting widow's request, was forwarded to the Utah Vietnam Era Veterans Memorial Committee. The guilt-ridde- appeared to be signed by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, retired chief of naval operations. Moorer actually signs his name "TJL Moorer." With his marriage again on the rocks, Fife completed the manuscript with a final paragraph referring to his suicide, ran a length hose from the exhaust of his parked vehicle and climbed inside. Robert Fife wanted to be remembered as the hero in the manuscript, not as a sexually twisted man obsessed by the circumstances of his birth. Fife, who died at 48, never knew his father. His mother later married, but didn't tell her other children Fife was a He knew it, though, and blamed his mother for making him "a bastard," says a sister, Lynda Turcsanski. It was Jeannie Kirk, head of the half-broth- panel decided last month after some debate to place Fife's name on the granite and marble structure scheduled to be dedicated this Saturday. Fife's would be the last of 390 names of Utah's Vietnam War dead. It nearly was. An artisan was preparing the rubber stencil that would be used to put Fife's name on the memorial when a reporter told Nancy Fife that her husband had lied about the sneakers. Hammond's opinion that Fife suffered from stress syndrome and was "very much a casualty of the Vietnam War" had included a general account of the 15 days patient's war experience of torment as a POW after the F-- 4 from the USS Ranger on which be was navigator was shot down in early 1966. The memorial committee had no reason to doubt it. Fife didnt usually talk much about Vietnam, but his wife had accompanied him to the first session with Hammond in 1985. He had used the old fiction to try to justify the shambles of his life. The following year, as the couple separation, Fife began a started putting the false history on paper. He hoped the work would be published posthumously. At about the same time Fife acquired a certificate, dated Sept. 15, 1987, and a set of silver dog tags, purportedly from the USS "7"V t KM disorder, meaning very noncon- forming, rebellious, somewhat antisocial," Hammond said. "With almost any addiction, whether it is alcohol, drugs or sex, people have to -- learn- to be extra deceitful and manipulative to get away with it" Assuming the identity of a Vietnam veteran was assuming a disability that would excuse his deficiencies and gain him sympathy and understanding, Hammond said. "I suspect the manuscript may effort have been a sort of last-ditcat salvaging a little bit of he said. "That perhaps his children, who I think he did care about, would take a more sympathetic, tolerant view of him-- " -- ... x 3 h self-estee- AP Lascrpboto Nancy Fife sits next to the Navy headstone provided for her husband's grave. enlisted in September 1965 and was discharged eight months later as medically unfit Broken bones in his right foot during childhood hadn't mended properly and made it impossible for him to wear government-issue shoes without pain. After initial training in San Diego, the apprentice airman had been shipped to a naval air station in Beeville, Texas, where he pulled guard duty on an airstrip. His only medal was the Defense Service Award given to every one. "I feel like I've been raped," Nancy Fife said after being told of the deception. After a great deal of anguish, she decided to tell the truth to her son, a profoundly deaf and her daughter, 19. "Intellectually I know I have the right to be angry," she said, "but even with all of this I first need to understand it all." Friends and relatives knew Fife as unreliable, angry, a dreamer, a failed businessman who gambled away $172,000 of a partner's money, a sometime truck driver, a would-b- e writer. But his wife, who met him in the months following his naval service, knew him as a pornography addict who spent hours alone with his erotic trove. nr ' ID 1 year support GUARANTEE Individual appointments NO drugv NO ptlis euiebhlu free pbone COESUMiDI 7 35 RED DOOR THE FRAGRANCE Fix Your Loan Rate On Home Equity Loans ELIZABETH ARDEN A dazzling new fragrance that unlocks a world of beauty, elegance and style.. .just for you. ANNUAL PERCENTAGE RATE htevpvthng J J J .1 NO CHANGE IX MONTHLY PAYMENTS Y( u nan count cm the same hw payment cury month. NO VARIABLE RATES lakes the worn- out cT rising inlmfsl rales. Xo surprises. Just the same hw rate for the hie f the loan. 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Beit of bea ytvmdiw pjntew, "LA U.S. BANK A U Red .'.at.?j5 aid - am a mgdritkrfv8iflyim. twA-vie- d 11 vou ffcuuiMie. unioldng iVyrn Ta'e and freesia. monthly payments, make borne iniprxwmentu, assist with major pun bases ur wnd nu ui ibat tirll deserved t utuhon ( tiill - find the bestfinannrrg package Page Dl no hero. "He was what we call personality Navy's Awards and Special Projects Branch, who at the request of a reporter caught Fife's lie. She finds 10 or 12 such cases a year. Fife's Navy record showed he n, - reerd learns he faked war wnff Ranger Committee, listing the med"There was always talk of unconals he said he had burned at the trollable anger and rage at people, time to protest bad treatment of and if he didn't do that he'd kill Vietnam veterans. They included someone," said Nancy Fife, who the Navy Cross, the service's highacknowledges now that "I was alest award for valor. ways going to make a miracle" of Lt J.G. Robert J. Fife, after 130 the marriage. missions over enemy territory, was of the sex Hammond, "one of only four naval aviators to and marital therapy clinic at the escape from enemy prison camps," University of Utah, said be was not according to the certificate, which entirely surprised to learn Fife was - THE HERALD, Prove, Utah, 1S89 H WOKE: VH YOLP CHfl ACCOU?! SWJIAKE. UAH WO THE U?4HID SVftS. 59-66- |