FAMILY OBITUARIES
Note: to read the full obituaries of my father, my mother, and my brother, please click or tap the READ MORE link. Each of their stories is remarkable to me since I grew up within this family but remarkable, too, because each of their lives was set within the ferment and cataclysms of the 20th century.
ELMO RUSSELL ZUMWALT III
30 July 1946 - 13 August 1988
Elmo R. Zumwalt III, son of the admiral who ordered the spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam, and who was exposed to the defoliant himself, died of cancer today at his home. He was 42 years old.
The younger Mr. Zumwalt, a lawyer, said he never blamed his father for the disease. The two co-wrote a book entitled My Father, My Son that was published by Macmillan in 1986. It was made into a television movie by the same title.
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ADMIRAL ELMO RUSSELL ZUMWALT, JR.
29 November 1920 - 2 January 2000
Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., who as chief of naval operations in the early 1970's ordered the Navy to end racial discrimination and demeaning restrictions on sailors, then faced a haunting personal anguish that he attributed to the defoliant Agent Orange, died yesterday at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. He was 79 and lived in Arlington, Va.
The cause was complications from surgery for a chest tumor.
In July 1970, when Admiral Zumwalt, at age 49, became the youngest man to serve as the Navy's top-ranking officer, re-enlistments were plunging in the face of the war in Vietnam.
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MOUZA COUTELAIS-DU-ROCHE ZUMWALT
22 January 1922 - 25 August 2005
Mouza Coutelais-du-Roche Zumwalt, 83, who partnered with her husband during his lengthy Navy career to make conditions better for military families and later joined him in building up a national bone-marrow registry, died Aug. 25 of congestive heart failure at her home in Arlington.
From the time she married naval officer Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. in Shanghai in 1945 (after knowing him for three weeks) until the admiral's death in 2000, Mrs. Zumwalt engaged in the delicate role of supporting her husband's work from behind the scenes.
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