MADISON, MISSISSIPPI
December 30, 2015

Author’s journey leads to love for Marines

By Duncan Dent
Madison County Journal Staff Writer

A local author has found her niche with an audience she never expected to touch – military wives.

Madison’s Stephanie Hanson Caisse, who moved here 18 months ago when her husband took a job teaching JROTC at Germantown High School, self-published her second book “A Corpsman’s Legacy Continues” in November on Amazon.com to rave reviews.

After being laid off last spring, Caisse used the time off of work as an opportunity to finish work on the book, the follow-up to her 2006 debut titled “A Corpsman’s Legacy: He Continues to Heal Others Through the Daughter He Never Knew” – the story of Caisse’s eight-year journey to learn the identity and fate of her late father.

Today, Caisse said she and her husband are delighted to have found a home in Madison County.

Her husband had originally accepted a job at a different school. Caisse said the decision to head to Germantown was simple after the couple received “a ton of incredible support” from the people at GHS.

“The people brought us here,” Caisse said. “I tell my friends it is such a hidden gem.”

The Caisses’ journey to Madison is filled with a number of occurrences and circumstances, but her work pivots around just two dates.

First, on Feb. 7, 1969, a helicopter from Marine unit HMM–364, carrying her father Gary Norman Young – the subject of her first book – was shot down in Vietnam, carrying five Marines and two Navy Corpsmen.

Caisse was adopted and never knew of her father’s fate until 1996, when she was diagnosed with a congenital illness and told to track down her birth parents.

The first “Corpsman” book began as a journal, but grew into a way to commemorate both the “unbelievable amount of help and support” she received from Marines and the memory of “those that wrote that blank check for our freedom.”

In her search, Caisse said she found “a whole group of uncles” and even met her husband while she was promoting her first book.

On the second date, Feb. 7, 2007, a helicopter from Marine unit HMM–364 was shot down in Iraq while carrying five Marines and two Navy Corpsmen – the subjects of the second book.

As chance would have it, the crew in Iraq was carrying a flag in memory of the crew from Vietnam, including Stephanie’s father.

Caisse described the odds of this happening as “incalculable.”

“It is a rarity for sure,” she said. “Nothing like this has happened to any other Marine unit that I know of.”

The helicopters belonged to the “Purple Foxes,” the renowned helicopter squadron that started service during the Vietnam War and has continued service in the Middle East.

Seven years after the crash, Caisse finally got to publish the book she wanted to write. Her original publisher had gone out of business in 2009, but she was able to get the book out thanks to Amazon.com.

“I felt OK because I had the support,” Caisse said. “I had been wanting to write since I heard of the second crash but I did not want to seem like I was cashing in on a tragedy.”

The second book took her a significantly shorter amount of time, about eight months, but she said that didn’t make it any less painful.

“It was tougher in some ways because it was dealing with events as they happened,” she said. “Very fresh memories. It has been a blessing to become friends with these families. It’s for them, not for me. I am honored to do it and get their story out there, I can’t talk about it enough in my mind.”

Through word of mouth and her own efforts to provide copies for marines her book has gained a tidy following from military wives.

“It resonates with them,” she said. “Women constantly contact me and tell me the book helped them better understand their husbands, sons, brothers, etc. from every war. I have had women of every age say how much it resonated with them.”

The book has even made its way up the chain of command. Her first book made it in front of an officer that liked it so much he had it out on the suggested reading list for first year Marine Aircraft Wing Navy Corpsman.

“To be recognized in that way is such a huge honor,” Caisse said.