Lorain, Ohio - Shadowboxes seem like good storage places for old wars and memories.

Cabinetmaker Larry M. Fields said Thursday that he will make a shadowbox to store the memories of his father, who died in Vietnam 39 years ago.

Fields was just 3 years old when an explosion in Quang Tri province of what was then South Vietnam killed his father, Larry E. Fields, on July 15, 1967. He was to leave for home in early September.

The boy would not learn of his father's death for years. He was too young to know, his mother said.

Recently, Fields accepted his father's dog tags, left behind when they shipped his father's body home to Ohio.

Field's dog tags were the 29th mailed or delivered to Vietnam-era families by Martha and "Swede" Roskam, a Wheaton, Il., couple who bought 37 GI dog tags from a street vendor in Saigon for $20 in August 2001.

Fields, now 42, said he never knew too much about his dad. People told him his father was "a good guy, tough as nails," he said.

His 4-year old twins, Connor and Tyler, chattered about the good cookies being served - their minds far from the fields of Vietnam.

Fields said he tried to explain to the twins what was going on, but they just didn't quite grasp it. His older sons, Jimmy, 11, and Kyle, 9, had a better handle on the importance of what was happening.

Too shy to make speeches, Fields struggled to find words to explain how he felt as he talked to reporters. He kept his eyes on his dad's dog tags wrapped around his left hand.

"I'm doing this for him, but its beneficial for me too," he said. "It gives me closure."

Closure is a word that two other families used as they talked about the dog tags the Roskams delivered.

In Ovid, MI., Bill Sloat said his mother, Janet, keeps the tags in a shadowbox with other medals and ribbons.

They belonged to his brother, Ben, who died March 19, 1970, just 69 days after arriving in Vietnam.

Sloat, a former newspaper reporter, said he was aware of the doubt that surrounds the dog tags - suggestions that they just might be knockoffs produced on dog tag machines left behind after the war.

"It just wasn't important," he said.

The tags that the Roskams brought last year to Michigan meant something for Ben's mother and brother.

"It was very important for my mother," Sloat said. "There's some kind of closure there."

Ben said the war has created a quiet division among the three remaining brothers. Ben and Rick served in Vietnam. Bill and Bob are not veterans.

After the war, Rick talked little about Vietnam or his brother's death.

Until Ben's tags came home.

"One of the things it did for Rick as loosen him up," Bill said.

Billy Racca of Jennings, LA., survived the war, got married about a year later ad became a welder for a ship-building company.

One of the things that did not make it back to Jennings was Billy Racca's duffel bag. His wife of 34 years, Mona, said Billy thought the dog tags might have been in the bag that was lost.

Billy, who turned 55 recently, is "a quiet fellow," his wife said.

'Til this day, he doesn't talk too much about" the war, she said.

But Billy's story got out when the Roskams came to town.Small-town local papers carried the story about the dog tags that came home.

"He's a celebrity," Mona said. "I feel very proud of him."