Searching For Lone Star: A Tale of Two Brothers

In 2000, CIA director George J. Tenet revealed the identities of some of those who were represented by nameless stars on the CIA’s Memorial Wall at its headquarters. Among those was a Texan named John W. Kearns. John served as a special operations officer in the so-called “secret war” in Laos, the CIA’s paramilitary operation during the Vietnam War. John, whose call sign was, fittingly, “Lone Star,” was killed in action in 1972. He was posthumously awarded the CIA’s highest honor, the  Intelligence Star, “in recognition of his courageous performance under hazardous conditions.” 

For years, John’s story stayed pretty well unknown, shrouded in secrecy by classified government documents and mentioned only in passing in books about the “secret war.” Until now. Paul Heckmann, with the assistance of Mike Farris, tells his own personal story of adoption as a child and struggles with addiction that, later in life, led him to search for his biological family—and to discover a hero half-brother he had never known. While digging deeper into John’s story of heroism, he struggled with new and seemingly insurmountable physical difficulties of his own. 

Searching for Lone Star tells the story of two brothers, neither of whom knew about the other until long after the heroic death of the older that inspired the younger to overcome his own adversity. It is a story of sacrifice and inspiration, of love and loss, and, ultimately, of family.

Mike Farris: Mike Farris is the author of nineteen published books, both fiction and non-fiction, including historical true crime. A retired attorney whose practice in Dallas included commercial litigation and entertainment law, he is now an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. 

Paul Heckmann was born in Fort Worth, Texas, but adopted by a couple from Waco. After college at Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M-Kingsville), where he played on two NAIA national championship football teams, he moved to Dallas. There he worked as a model, actor, and club bouncer, then spent the next decade working onboard cruise ships before entering the IT world as an IT Manager.