Old letters spark recollection of a dysfunctional family, a foster care childhood, and one enduring love

California

He calls to tell me about some old letters from Vietnam I might be interested in reading, but first we talk about his life growing up in the San Fernando Valley as a foster care child, and the only family to ever call him son.

  • Scott Cappiello, 81, shows his shop at his Shadow Hills...

    Scott Cappiello, 81, shows his shop at his Shadow Hills home on Thursday, August 4, 2022. Cappiello received letters from the family of a foster parent he wrote while serving in the psychological warfare unit in Vietnam and was surprised his letters were saved all these years. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

  • Scott Cappiello, 81, reads a letter at his Shadow Hills...

    Scott Cappiello, 81, reads a letter at his Shadow Hills home on Thursday, August 4, 2022 which he wrote to a foster parent while serving in the psychological warfare unit in Vietnam. Cappiello was surprised his letters were saved all these years by the family. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

  • Scott Cappiello, 81, shows his saved propaganda fliers at his...

    Scott Cappiello, 81, shows his saved propaganda fliers at his Shadow Hills home on Thursday, August 4, 2022 he saved while serving in the psychological warfare unit in Vietnam. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

  • Scott and Gladys Cappiello at their Shadow Hills home on...

    Scott and Gladys Cappiello at their Shadow Hills home on Thursday, August 4, 2022. Cappiello received letters from the family of a foster parent he wrote while serving in the psychological warfare unit in Vietnam and was surprised his letters were saved all these years. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

  • Scott Cappiello, 81, shows his shop at his Shadow Hills...

    Scott Cappiello, 81, shows his shop at his Shadow Hills home on Thursday, August 4, 2022. Cappiello received letters from the family of a foster parent he wrote while serving in the psychological warfare unit in Vietnam and was surprised his letters were saved all these years. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

“After my mother left us, she ended up at Camarillo State Mental Hospital, as did my sister years later,” Scott Cappiello says. His mother and his sister “met in the kitchen one day, and began talking. My mother told her she had a daughter just about her age, and the next time they met she showed her a picture of her little girl.

“My sister looked at it and said, ‘That’s me.’ The next day she was moved to another facility.”

He was 21 when he finally got his sister out of the mental health system, and gave her a real home for the first time with the money he earned as a silk screener. It lasted a year until he was drafted in 1963 and sent to Vietnam.

His sister took a job working for a family for room and board. She was cheap labor. She died at 42 from a blood clot that reached her heart.

His mother left Camarillo in the care of an uncle who took responsibility for her. She met a man and started her third family. She never looked back at her other two.

The only real family relationship Scott ever had lasted six months — the second of seven foster care homes and two group homes he lived in growing up. They were the Trethewey’s, Martel and Irene, of Burbank. Scott was 10 and spent fifth grade with them.

“They were the only family to call me son,” he says. “I didn’t realize the impact of that until I was much older. They wanted to adopt me, but my father refused to sign the papers, even though he didn’t want me. I moved on, but always stayed in touch with them.

“I spent sixth grade with a family in Manhattan Beach who had two other foster care kids and were in it strictly for the income they made. The day before I was to collect for my paper route delivering the Daily Breeze, I was moved again, and lost a whole month’s pay.”

His next stop was a family in Van Nuys, then a halfway house for children in Eagle Rock for a year until he got too old to stay there.

“I was moved to Pacific Lodge Boys Home, (in Woodland Hills) which is for kids who had been in trouble, but I hadn’t been,” he says. “I was a good kid getting good grades. I was there for almost a year when a visiting social worker recognized me and asked what I was doing there? She knew I wasn’t a troublemaker.”

She found him a foster home in San Fernando before he was moved one last time to another family in Burbank who had lost a son and wanted Scott as a replacement, so their remaining son would have a brother about the same age.

He fit the bill perfectly for the next five years, but they never called him son. Only the Tretheweys had, and they’re the reason he called me.

They were proud of him for rising above a childhood that could have easily made him bitter, and turning it into a driving force to be someone special, someone admired.

He became a shop teacher and rose through the ranks at Los Angeles Unified School District to be the top man overseeing all the shop classes, where kids learned with their hands to make a good living.

He retired to open his own wood shop, making doors and cabinets after the brain trusts in the school district decided shop classes would be cutback and eventually eliminated — one of the dumbest moves the district ever made.

The letters from Vietnam were sent to him by Martel’s widow, whom he married after Irene died. She was going through his files, and found them. He had kept them all these years.

They were from a young soldier stationed in Saigon 62 years ago — written to the only family who had ever called him son.

Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.

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