Constable: How teardrop earrings symbolize wounds of war

The earrings are in the shape of tear drops, which is fitting for jewelry crafted not just of gold and emeralds, but from the wounds of war, the pain of loss and the hope for redemption. Many real tears have been shed in the 50 years since the earrings arrived wrapped in anguish and mystery, with unwanted baggage.

They were a gift from the only son of seven children born to Irving and Cecilia Goto of Chicago. Gregory I. Goto described himself as "a red-blooded, adventurous teenager" when he left high school at 17 to enlist in the U.S. Navy during the bloodiest years of the Vietnam War.

"I worried," remembers his mother, 93 and living in the Lexington of Wheeling rehabilitation and skilled nursing facility. "There was no talking him out of it."

Gregory was stationed in Da Nang, where the outgoing teen made friends easily and had a knack for finding whatever his friends wanted. When he came home to his relieved mother in 1968, he carried the unusual present.

"He brought me a gift of golden earrings in the shape of a teardrop with an emerald in the middle of each," Cecilia says.

Her appreciation for them changed when Gregory told her the gold came from the bodies of Viet Cong soldiers killed by the Americans. Always one who enjoyed unexpected twists in his stories, Gregory told how soldiers sometimes removed jewelry from the bodies of soldiers they killed, and some even pried gold fillings from the mouths of dead enemies.

"He was young and thought this would be a nice gift for his mother. I wore them a few times but always treated them with care, as more of a keepsake," Cecilia remembers.

The source of the gold haunted her, and, she thought, perhaps her son.

During the next 25 years, Gregory saw plenty of trouble from the heroin addiction he attributed to time spent in the "opium dens in Da Nang." According to his unpublished biography, Gregory's drug habit led to bank robberies and other crimes that earned him sentences in a pair of infamous prisons - Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, and Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. He managed to escape from Angola, but was picked up in Canada and returned to the prison.

Gregory paid his debt to society, but his mother worried that whatever evils were attached to the earrings still lingered.

Hoping to change her son's karma and bring peace to the dead enemy soldiers, "I wanted to send them back."

In the summer of 1994, Cecilia packed up the earrings and mailed them to a post office in Da Nang with a letter.

"I am now returning them, and asking forgiveness, as I believe they were made from wedding rings of dead Vietnam soldiers," Cecilia wrote. "So sad! I'm so sorry."

She asked that the jewelry be given a proper burial "to bring peace to all in the name of God our Father."

The Da Nang postmaster gave the earrings to a war museum and told the story to his local newspaper, which printed Cecilia's letter and address. By August, Cecilia had received the first of dozens of letters, some in broken English and many in Vietnamese, all from Vietnam.

"It happened so fast," Cecilia says.

"You are a great mother. This is a nice soul!" read one letter in English. "May I call you my godmother?"

A man whose father was killed during a battle against the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War was so touched by Cecilia's return of the earrings that he wrote, "God carries dreams to you."

One Vietnamese mother said, "I always think that you American people can never have such impression of other people," adding that she was "very surprised" by Cecilia's gesture.

"Here's the one I think really touched me," Cecilia says, showing a letter that came with a photograph of a somber family posing in front of an altar with a cross and a photograph of a man. "It's the family of a dead soldier."

The earrings still reside in a war museum in Da Nang. Gregory, having served his time and vowing to live a good life, had no issues with his mom returning the earrings and appreciated her efforts on his behalf, family members say. He died at age 49 in 1996. His family says his death was due to lung complications caused by exposure to Agent Orange, the herbicide sprayed across Vietnam by U.S. forces and linked to various cancers and health issues. Gregory's legacy is a grown son and two daughters who are healthy and happy, says his sister Susan Schiavone, who lives in Roselle.

Irving Goto, a World War II veteran who received a Purple Heart, carved out an impressive career with the Chicago Park District, and claimed Japanese and Norwegian ancestry. Cecilia, whose heritage was German and Irish, was a stay-at-home mom when her kids were little, and held a variety of jobs in Chicago and in Florida, where she and her husband spent half of each year after he retired. Their oldest children, Sharon and Gregory, have both died, but others are Marcia Forbes, who lives in the Chicago house where her father was born, Schiavone, Leslie Wells of Wisconsin, Cathy Goto of Park Ridge and Melanie Dillon of Mundelein.

Influenced by her brother's life, Dillon is a therapist who works with drug addiction and issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The origin of the earrings isn't as important as the good they inspired, she says. Dillon says it was "impressive" that her mother - in an era before the internet and cellphones - found a way to return the tainted earrings to Vietnam.

"She has the most expansive world view for someone her age. She had a way of constantly turning the other cheek. That was her strength," Dillon says. "She had the compassion to look at both sides."

Cecilia, who became a widow in 1997, has 23 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren with a 25th on the way, and seven great-great grandchildren.

Returning the spoils of war was an attempt to "heal wounds," Cecilia says today. Not just for the dead enemies, but for her son.

"As a mother, she was just trying to get his karma right," Schiavone says. "You're only as happy as your saddest child."

Gregory and those enemy combatants are dead. The wounds of war endure. And a pair of earrings in a museum case give hope to the idea that it's never too late for efforts to make things right again.