Trooper Lonnie Wyatt pressed the disconnect button on her secure cell phone and snapped it back into the cradle on the dash-board of the white turbo-charged Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser as she drove down the Richardson Highway toward Johnson Road.
Her mind reverberated with the name Commander Stark had mentioned: Marcus Johnson. The name of the man she had been in love with since high school, the man who had proposed to her. The man she rejected because he wouldn’t leave the Marines for her.
“I’ll kill Dad for not telling me he was in town,” she said out loud. She found herself shocked by the sound of Marcus’s name on her own lips. “Come on, girl. You’re an Alaska State Trooper. Keep it professional and get the investigation over with.”
Born Sukmi Kim, Lonnie was the adopted daughter of Eugene and Leslie Wyatt. The couple had taken her into their family while stationed with the US Army in South Korea in 1975. She was six years old when she had been orphaned after a relatively peaceful demonstration for student’s rights escalated into a nightmare as North Korean Communist infiltrators shot it out with South Korean soldiers and police. Her parents, graduate students at Yonseh University, had been on their way to pick Sukmi up from her grandmother’s house. They got caught in the crossfire and died huddled in each other’s arms.
Sukmi’s grandmother’s health declined rapidly after the loss of her only son. She had a stroke two weeks later and Sukmi found herself left to a neighbor. When it became clear that her grandmother’s condition would not improve, the neighbor took Sukmi to live in an orphanage. Because of her age — most people adopted babies — the little girl stayed there for nearly a year.
Then along came Eugene Wyatt, a twenty-two-year-old sergeant in the Communications Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, at Camp Casey. The Army base was located in the small city of Dongduchon, nestled in the mountains just north of Seoul. It was only thirty miles south of the demilitarized zone where North Korean soldiers faced off daily with their South Korean and American counterparts across a tense, three-hundred-yard-wide, land-mine-studded border manned by heavily armed soldiers from both sides.
Eugene had always wanted a family. He and his wife, Leslie, found that they could not have a child of their own. The couple decided that adoption was their best choice, and South Korea at the time was practically overflowing with children waiting for homes.
They drove forty miles to the city of Seoul and found the Blessed Angels Catholic Orphanage in the midst of the bustling metropolis along the banks of the Han River. When the Wyatts entered the courtyard, the children all stopped what they were doing and stared at the white-skinned, round-eyed Migook who walked past them. Looks of hope sparked on some of their faces, while others seemed to know that once again, they would be passed up. They turned away and sullenly continued their games. Eugene and Leslie had initially, like most couples, wanted a baby.
Six-year-old Sukmi sat alone on the concrete steps that led to the massive, dark wooden front door of the stone-and-timber-frame three-story building. The little girl had a single, thickly woven braid of long, black hair hanging down to the middle of her back. She looked up at the kind faces of the man and woman who approached. Her eyes were filled with the pain of a life broken, of hope nearly crushed. As they approached, Sukmi’s pleading gaze captivated both Eugene and Leslie as if her fragile soul cried out from within the tiny body, begging to be redeemed from the misery her life had become.
Eugene was immediately overwhelmed with compassion for the pretty little girl. Inside the building, he asked the nun who spoke with them about the girl on the steps. Once they heard her story, he and Leslie agreed that if she was willing to come with them, they wanted to give her a new home. The girl was brought in to meet them, and although they were not able to communicate with more than hand gestures and Eugene’s minimal, broken Korean, hope again sparked in her eyes as Sukmi realized that this Migook couple really seemed to care, that they truly wanted to rescue her.
Over the course of a month, the paperwork was done, the fees paid and cute little Sukmi officially became their daughter. Six months later, the Army moved them to Fort Wainright in Fairbanks, Alaska. The American name “Lonnie” was chosen because it was easy to spell and say in both English and Korean. Sukmi thought it was pretty. She told her new parents that the name “sounded like flowers and sunshine” to her.
The Wyatts liked Fairbanks, a small city of about thirty thousand at the time. Eugene and his wife were originally from Oklahoma. However, when they got out of the Army, the couple decided to stay where they were. He got a job as a lineman with Tanana Valley Electrical Cooperative. They settled into a new home in the Graehl neighborhood on the east side of Fairbanks.
Lonnie’s childhood in Alaska was peaceful and comfortable. Her parents had decided that she should not lose the knowledge of her Korean heritage, so they joined a small Korean Presbyterian church located near their home and made sure she was tutored in her native language and culture. By the time she was an adult, she had retained natively fluent Korean and unaccented English and moved easily both in Korean and American social circles.
She met Marcus during a cross-country track meet at Lathrop High School in 1984. Lonnie was a contender for the All Alaska title in the girls’ 5K event. Marcus was the current state champion in the boys’ 10K. He had clean, golden-brown skin topped by a thick layer of wavy black hair closely cropped on the sides and combed back over his head. His features, a gentle mixture of black and Athabaskan native, gave him an appearance that was at once strong and tender. Throughout the race that first day, she could not take her eyes off him. He noticed her constant glances and reciprocated in like manner.
They dated all through the rest of high school until he joined the Marines after graduation in 1986. While in college at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she majored in mathematics, Lonnie waited for him to finish his six-year commitment and come home. She envisioned them getting married and settling down to a normal Alaskan life of enjoying the great outdoors, having children, and taking an occasional trip to some remote tropical island in mid-winter.
Marcus constantly wrote romantic letters and postcards to her from wherever he was stationed. He often penned beautiful poems for her. Those were her favorite part of his writings. He had the ability to explain his thoughts in ways more real than she understood her own feelings. Every time he wrote to her, she felt as if she was looking into his soul. She wished she had the same ability. Her strength lay not in poetry, though, but in the analytical thinking of math and hard sciences.
Several times, Marcus sent her money to fly down to see him wherever he was stationed, and once even brought her to Europe, to take part in Linus and Cara’s wedding in Norway. It was there that he asked her to marry him. Lonnie had thought about it during the previous years. She knew that eventually he would ask. She had worked over her response many times. Her answer came with a stipulation. It sounded logical to her. His love for her would be proven by his willingness to submit to this one simple request.
Lonnie knew Marcus would be a good husband, but the idea of sharing him with a job that constantly called him to distant places and faraway lands did not fit her vision of a happy couple. That their marriage could suddenly end with a chaplain knocking on the door to inform the young wife of the sad news of her husband’s heroic death was more than she thought she could handle. If he would leave the Marines, she would accept. From the moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them.
He told her he understood, but hoped she would change her mind. He could not leave the Corps. It had become his identity. He was a “poster Marine,” the model of a compassionate warrior recruiters used to draw new men into their brotherhood. Lonnie continued to write to him and he wrote back. As time went on, the romantic allusions in his letters gradually disappeared.