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(Editor's note) Sometime ago Colonel Humbert J. Versace’s widow, Mrs. Tere Rios Versace, herself a writer and reporter, was asked whether she would care to write his obituary for ASSEMBLY. She responded by suggesting that she attempt a combined submission covering both her husband and their oldest son "Rocky” (United States Military Academy Class of 1959) who lost his life while a prisoner of the VietCong during the early years of that tragic war. Here then is a father-son picture of those two fine officers, a moving and poignant tribute to them both, and a ringing testimonial to the courage, steadfastness, pride and love of this Army family.</div>
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Belonging to Hum and Rocky was inspiring, exhilarating, secure. Two strong men, they loved their country with a fierce and demanding love that transferred itself to us, so that even in losing them, we came out survivors.</div>
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Hum gave his wisdom, his intelligence, his humor, his balanced judgment to the four men and a woman he fathered.</div>
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Now Hum and Rocky have gone on ahead and the others, Steve, Dick, Mike and Tracy, with the same kind of angry generous love, are leading, teaching and caring for the young.</div>
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Throughout his life, Hum remained steadfastly loyal to West Point, to the Army, to our country. The Army was his life. He tried to make the world a better place living by and within that system. His greatest show of courage was when I, his wife, chose to question that system. Weakened by strokes and heart attacks, he staunchly defended my right to think and speak freely as an American citizen.</div>
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His purgatory was knowing what was happening to Rocky and keeping his own promises to God and country, down through those years.</div>
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Rocky gave those same qualities to the Service. Just before he was captured, he had decided to leave the Army for the priesthood, and was accepted as a candiate for Mary-knoll.</div>
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Captain James N. Rowe, who was captured with Rocky, says in his book, <em>Five Years to Freedom</em>:</div>
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“Rocky, with a wounded leg, surrounded by deep mud terrain and a camp full of guards, had tried to escape. He had more guts than brains to try it at this point, and he was caught, pulling himself through the oozing slime toward a canal...where he could swim...northward toward a friendly outpost. Before, the cadre had assumed from Rocky’s opinions that they had a hard case on their hands. Now they knew it.”</div>
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What they didn’t know was that without his glasses, which were lost in battle, Rocky was almost blind. After the escape, Rowe says, “The guards constructed a tiny cubicle wide enough for a mosquito net and barely high enough to raise the three-foot height. The sides and top were covered with thatching, blocking out light and any flow of air. With his wounded leg in the restriction of irons and forced to stay in the cramped, hot cell. Rocky continued to duel verbally with the cadre in French, Vietnamese and English...”</div>
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At the end of two years, Rocky was killed by a VietCong firing squad.</div>
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It might be a good thing that the Vietnamese do not return Rocky’s body to his own land. But even if they do, his spirit will be there as it is with us, as Hum’s is, as strong as they were in life.</div>
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It takes a strong country to permit the existence of one such valiant spirit. Hum and Rocky were two. There are four more of the same calibre. Well be all right.</div>
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<em>—Tere Rios Versace</em></div>
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