How We Found Lt. Romani

Among Marvin Miller's photographs from Vietnam was a collection that included images of a man whose name had not been recorded. Through research, Marvin's son identified this man as Lieutenant Val Romani — Cat 6, Platoon Commander of Cat Platoon in the final months of Marvin's tour.

A company roster for D/2-8 Cav included contact information for Romani. The phone number listed proved to be no good. An address was also listed, and Marvin's son felt reasonably confident it was current — but had no way to verify it without trying. There was no other path in.

He printed the photographs. He wrote a letter. To make the envelope noticeable — to give it the best possible chance of being opened rather than discarded — he affixed a 1st Air Cavalry Division patch sticker to the outside.

Then he mailed it and waited.

He heard nothing for long enough that he was beginning to give up.

Then Romani called.

Romani had never talked much about the war with anyone. He remains, to this day, somewhat disaffected about the value of the war itself — a position held honestly and without apology, which coexists in him with the specific memories he went on to share. He read the letter privately and then told his children about it. It was his decision to share it with them, which means he had already determined it was significant before they became involved. Their encouragement confirmed a direction he was already leaning toward.

The detail that struck Romani most — the thing that tipped him toward calling — was the particular strangeness of receiving photographs of yourself taken fifty-four years ago, as a young man in Vietnam, sent by a total stranger. A man he had never met, the son of one of his squad leaders, had found pictures of him in a dead man's collection, identified him, and mailed them across the country on the chance that the address was still good.

That fact — its oddness, its unexpectedness, the gap of more than half a century it represented — was what moved him.

His recollections of Marvin Miller are documented in a separate account. The approach used here — roster, address, printed photographs, a recognizable patch on the envelope — is preserved as a research method, for whoever comes next with a name and a photograph and no working phone number.

Any chain of contingencies, and this conversation doesn't happen: a number that didn't work but an address that did; photographs that happened to be in Marvin's collection and happened to include Romani; a sticker on an envelope; children who happened to be present when a letter arrived. The archive exists in part because of luck, and that is worth saying plainly.