She was given up at birth only to discover her father was an East Texas soldier. Rick Rowe says her story is one of the Ark-La-Tex Bestits sits on top of a hill just outside linden Texas....a grave marked with flags...it tells you this was a soldier.buried here......but cemetery's all over America are filled with graves just like it....nothing special until you look at the date....January 27th 1973...we'd heard that date before....the ceasefire will take affect on 2400 Greenwich time... January 27th 1973.......the Vietnam war would be over........no one wanted that anymore that John O Neil Rucker....he loved to hunt and fish and he love nature...he was a typical small town boy from east Texas.....when he graduated from linden high he joined the air force....went to Vietnam.......came home for r and r in DEC. 1972....sot...went hunting with his daddy ... that's was there big thing hunting and fishing....then it was that last trip to the airport in Shreveport...sot...and i just had this feeling that i would never see him again.... that's hard....26 days later...just a few hours before the cease fire was to take place...sot..the north Vietnam had to make one more strike...there was a rocket attack on johns base ... in da nang...he never knew what hit him.....but the story doesn't end there....you see there had been a big party a few nights before...a baby had been conceived.....that baby was adopted by a couple in Denver...she grew up...and a few months ago started looking for her daddy.....sot...John O Neil Rucker...had a glitch in my heart and started to cry...using DNA and gemology research... Tia now a 39 year old nurse..with 2 boys...thought she had found her father....

sot...i just knew like a parent knows a child knows too...

her grand mother knew it too..

sot...you know i have always had a feeling that someday someone was going to knock on my door and say your my grand mother....

tia came to linden....visited her father's grave....

sot....that was real hard..

then the memorial to her dad...in the courthouse square....

where we see that date again... January 27 1973.....John O Neil Rucker the last American soldier to die during the Vietnam war....

its been overwhelming emotional because this is someone I never met...but he is such a big part of who i am

people don't know how can you mourn someone you never knew...but that was my dad...

i will never get to know him now..or here his voice..or be hugged by him...but i will someday.