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http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liryan244862877aug24,0,6457109.story
Michael Ryan says
his daughter Kerry is a Vietnam veteran, just like him.
"She belongs on
the wall in Washington, D.C.," he said yesterday. "She
is a casualty of Vietnam the same as any man on there." Kerry
Ryan, 35, died Monday morning in her home in Boca Raton, Fla.,
of kidney failure after a life spent dealing with 22 major birth
defects her family attributes to Agent Orange,
a chemical used to defoliate the jungles of South Vietnam and
Cambodia during the war. Kerry stood as an example of the herbicide's
alleged harm to veterans' children.
The Ryan family became
part of the national consciousness when they were the named party
in a 1979 class-action lawsuit against Dow Chemical, a maker of
Agent Orange.
"Kerry died because
of my service to Vietnam, but it took her 35 years to die of her
wounds," said Ryan, who said he was exposed to dioxin, the
contaminant in Agent Orange, during a 13-month tour in Vietnam
starting in August 1966.
Ryan's wife, Maureen,
had an uneventful first pregnancy. But when Kerry was born in
Brooklyn in 1971, she had a hole in her heart, two cervixes, no
anus, a deformed right arm and spina bifida.
Maureen and Michael
Ryan, then a new officer with the Suffolk County Police Department,
took their newborn home to Kings Park, began a 35-year fight for
truth and came to embody the open wounds of the Vietnam War after
they went public with Kerry's plight.
What had happened,
according to Ryan and thousands of other veterans, was exposure
to Agent Orange, which was used from 1961 to 1971.
"If you could
prevent just one Kerry from being born, prevent some child from
how she suffered, it was a success," Ryan said. "It
was important to stop it. It was wrong, what the government was
doing. We had to get the message out."
In 1982, Kerry's parents
wrote a book, "Kerry: Agent Orange and an American Family."
The suit was settled
in 1984 for $180 million, which funded support services for veterans'
offspring, but didn't provide financial compensation. The Ryan
family didn't directly benefit from the accord.
Maureen Ryan, 55, died
of pancreatic cancer in 2003.
Despite Kerry's medical
challenges - she also suffered brain damage as a 1-year-old after
being overanesthetized during corrective surgery - Michael Ryan
and Kerry's aunt, Patty Stransky, said she was full of energy
and taught them many lessons.
"She woke up every
day happy to be alive," said Ryan, who moved his family to
Boca Raton, Fla., 11 years ago. "She touched thousands of
people."
Stransky added, "She
knew she was shortchanged on life, yet this kid kept going and
had a zest for life that was admirable."
In addition to her
father and aunt, Kerry is survived by a brother, Michael Ryan,
of Boca Raton.
Kerry will be cremated. A memorial will be held Sept. 23 at 1
p.m. at St. Joseph's Church in Kings Park.
Copyright (c) 2006,
Newsday, Melville, N.Y. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business
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