Hero Mama: a Daughter Remembers the Father She Lost in Vietnam--and the Mother Who Held Her Family Together.(Brief Article)(Book Review)

HERO MAMA: A Daughter Remembers the Father She Lost in Vietnam--And the Mother Who Held Her Family Together KAREN SPEARS ZACHARIAS. Morrow, $24.95 (384p) ISBN 0-06-072148-0

In December 1965, David Spears said good-bye to his wife and three children and went to fight in Vietnam; he returned "in a cargo plane full of caskets" in July 1966. His family has never been the same. "He was the center of what made me feel safe," Zacharias, then in third grade, explains. Her mother cried nonstop and never spoke of her beloved again. There wasn't much time for grief, anyway. Spears's paltry life insurance money was soon gone, and Zacharias's mother was a high school dropout …