Courtesy of Denice Chittenden

Dennis Larry Smith was 18, newly married and expecting a son when he did his tour of duty in Vietnam. He was injured there when a forklift — like the one pictured here — fell on top of him, crushing his leg and collapsing a lung.

Courtesy of Denice Chittenden

This is one of the only photos taken of Denice Chittenden, then 16, with her father, Dennis Larry Smith. It was taken at one of her uncles' homes on Father's Day 1983. "We had our picture taken and then he was gone again," she says.

Contact The Tribune at Joline Gutierrez Krueger or 823-3603; Denice Chittenden.

More News Columnists

• Bill Slakey: As Trib closes, many questions remain unasked
• Phill Casaus: Don't cry for us, Albuquerque; it was worth it
• Joline Gutierrez Krueger: My Wall of Fame holds memories of people, stories that have mattered

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

Denice Chittenden doesn't remember the color of her father's eyes. She can't make that out in the few photographs she has of him, the images too small, too blurry, too old.

Maybe they are brown, like hers.

So she thinks about them that way and wonders what it might be like to look into them again, if she could find him.

"I've been looking for him almost all my life," she said.

Dennis Larry "Corky" Smith would be 61 now. Chittenden, 39, expects that by now he would have lost most of his brown hair, which had already thinned out at the time the last photo — one of the only photos — was taken of her and him about 24 years ago. She was 16.

He was quiet, she remembers.

"He always smiled," she said. "He always seemed very happy. But behind it there was a sadness in his eyes, like something was bothering him and he couldn't talk about it."

So he didn't. Not to anyone she knows, anyway.

What she knows of him comes from her mother, who was 15 and pregnant with their first child when she married that handsome, sharp-jawed 18-year-old with a shock of sleek brown hair in Bleecker, N.Y.

Smith was dressed in his Army uniform at their wedding. Shortly afterward, he headed off to Vietnam.

By the time his tour of duty ended, he was a different man, haunted by the unspoken horrors of combat in an unpopular war.

He was also a broken man, severely injured on the very day he was coming home in 1968 when the forklift he was driving slipped on the rain-soaked tarmac and crushed him, collapsing his lung and shattering his leg.

Smith was shipped back to a VA hospital in Pennsylvania. Chittenden recalls her mother telling her how that treatment involved little more than pumping him full of addictive morphine, casting his leg, then shoving him out the door.

"My grandmother had to cut off his cast with a saw, and when she did the leg was infested with maggots and bone was protruding from the skin," she said.

Smith, shunned as many Vietnam vets were then, lived in the darkness of excruciating pain and bitter regret, she said. He was prescribed no pain medication and offered no assistance to conquer his war-driven demons, so Chittenden said her father turned to street drugs.

"It just went downhill from there," she said.

The local newspaper that carried Chittenden's birth announcement that October also carried a notice of her father's arrest on a marijuana possession charge that day, she said.

The Smiths' third child, another son, was born in April 1970.

Three months later, their father was gone.

Chittenden never blamed him, never gave up on him. He became mythical, tragic, his love surely available if she could just reach farther, run faster, do better.

She saw him three times more in those rare moments when he chose to resurface — once when she was 10, again when she was 16 and finally when she was 18.

"He would always say he was sorry he hadn't been around and then promise to stay in touch," she said.

But he didn't.

Chittenden, a social worker who now lives outside Macon, Ga., tracked her father about two years ago to Albuquerque by learning that his Army pension checks were being sent to an address on Central and Yale avenues Southeast.

But the address is a rental box at a UPS Store across from the University of New Mexico, a central location for anyone looking for easy access to mail and looking to stay lost.

She mailed a packet there with a self-addressed, stamped envelope and photos of her and her two sons, ages 14 and 18, and a letter that read: I don't want anything. I just want to know you're alive. If you aren't my dad, please mail this stuff back to me.

Nothing has ever been returned.

A search of the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division database lists a Dennis L. Smith at an address in Santa Fe or Espa¤ola. Neighbors say they have never heard of him.

Smith's driver's license expired on his birthday last year.

On the license, Smith's eye color was listed as blue.

No one has heard from Smith in years. The birthday card he always sent a sister, who shared his birth date, stopped coming about eight years ago. He has missed the funerals of his father and brother Roddy. He has missed his children's weddings and divorces, and the births of his six grandchildren.

Sometimes, though, it feels like Chittenden has missed even mor