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Bridging the Gap Between This Life and the Afterlife

At last night’s Bluegrass Writers Studio open-mic at Dreamin Creek Brewery, I knew I had to read an excerpt from my investigative memoir where my father writes my mother while nursing a beer at a café in Saigon in 1965. Despite his limited education and no formal training in writing, my father could make readers of his letter feel as if they were right there with him.

Often, when in a similar situation, alone, drinking, as I feel the cold transfer from the bottle or glass to the same ring he wore that I now wear, I’m reminded about this letter written on August 29, less than a month before my father’s death. It’s remarkable how something as trivial as a letter, a ring, and some alcohol can allow a father and son to bridge the gap between 1965 and the present, and between this life and the afterlife. I can picture my father at the café. I can see, hear, and smell what he sees, hears, and smells. I can’t explain it, but we have a drink together in our own magical or spiritual way. I still smile at the thought of it. Me, now a sixty-something-year-old son, having a drink with his thirty-nine-year-old father and catching up with him about the legacy he left for the generations that followed him.”

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By James b. Wells

JAMES B. WELLS is a retired criminology and criminal justice professor in the School of Justice Studies in the College of Justice, Safety, and Military Science at Eastern Kentucky University, and is the recipient of the 2025 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences John Howard Award, an award given intermittently, upon significant demand, to recognize an individual who has made significant and sustained contributions to the practice of corrections. A former carpenter, soldier, and correctional officer in a super-maximum-security prison and later as a researcher/planner assisting architects in prison design, he has multiple degrees, including an M.S. in Criminal Justice, a Ph.D. in Research, and an MFA in Creative Writing. He’s authored or co-authored over sixty-five books, chapters, articles, and essays, as well as over a hundred and fifty research reports for various local, state, and federal agencies. Recent essays from his research and memoir work appear or are forthcoming in Collateral Journal, About Place Journal, Wild Roof Journal, Military Experience and the Arts, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, Shift, Proud to be: Writing by American Warriors, Trajectory Journal, and From Pen to Page III: More Writings from the Bluegrass Writers Coalition.

His investigative memoir about his father's still CIA-classified death in Vietnam in 1965, titled Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew, will be launched on Father's Day weekend, 2025. Links to publications, presentations, trailers, social media, blog, and other information can be found at https://jamesbwells.com. James enjoys spending much of his leisure time with his spouse on their Lexington, Kentucky farm located on the palisades of the Kentucky River, where he is an organic gardener and beekeeper.

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