Philip Grey, The Leaf-Chronicle 8:25
p.m. CDT September 19, 2014
On
Friday, the daughter of an Air Force Lt. Col. missing in action for 46 years
brought her father’s memory back to life at Fort Campbell on National POW/MIA
Recognition Day
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. – Fort Campbell
held an observance of National POW/MIA (Prisoner of War/Missing in Action)
Recognition Day on Friday, which was the first time the post has held a formal
event marking the day.
The post’s Survivor Outreach
Services (S.O.S.) program hosted the event at the Don F. Pratt Museum, thanks
to the outreach of a surviving family member of a missing-in-action Vietnam-era
Air Force pilot.
Suzy Yates of S.O.S. said that Cindy
Stonebraker approached her about the national day of observance and inspired
her to help put together a program.
It was a natural fit for S.O.S. to
do so, since their function is to support surviving military family members. Though
the fate of Stonebraker’s father is not known for sure, after 46 years she has
come to terms with being a surviving family member of an American serviceman
who is not coming home.
And if the day signifies something
beyond recognizing the nation’s debt to prisoners of war and those who never came
home, it is the acknowledgment of the debt owed to those they left behind – the
family members who have had no grave to visit, and no closure for a wound that
has remained open for decades.
On Friday, Cindy Stonebraker,
daughter of U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Kenneth Stonebraker, told a small crowd at
the Don F. Pratt Museum on post what it was like to grow up as the daughter of
a missing service member.
‘POWMIA’
Col. David “Buck” Dellinger,
Commander, Fort Campbell Garrison, preceded Stonebraker and related the
Department of Defense numbers of missing service members from Vietnam – 1741,
with the remains of 841 MIAs recovered since the end of the war.
Cindy Stonebraker’s father has not
been recovered and his ultimate fate is unknown from the day he took off from a
Thailand airfield to perform a night reconnaissance mission over Vietnam on Oct. 28,
1968.
The date was ten days after her
birthday, and her last memory of him was a dollhouse he bought for her birthday
before he went missing.
The word, “missing” would be her
cross to bear for all the years to come. It made her different from other
children, especially when her mother moved the family to a northern California
area as far from the military as they could get.
“POWMIA,” Stonebraker said it as a
word. “It was something we didn’t deal with, didn’t talk about.
“Kids I grew up with didn’t know
anyone in the military, certainly didn’t know anyone lost in military service and had no idea about anybody
being missing.”
‘Not alone’
For more than four decades, Cindy
felt isolated and alone with a pain that had no end and no explanation.
Then one day four years ago, she was
driving from Hopkinsville to Clarksville and ran into nine members of Rolling
Thunder, an organization dedicated to publicizing the POW/MIA cause. They were
hoisting a POW/MIA flag at a rest stop.
Meeting them and talking to them
made her realize her dad was not entirely forgotten and she was not alone. It
was a life-changing moment that led her to others like her – children of the missing.
In the last three years she has
spent Father’s Day at the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C., found her dad’s military records, visited a plane like the one
her father flew, and attended a reunion of tactical recon Vietnam-era pilots
like her father, finding not just one, but three men who knew him.
And after all the years of doubt and
pain, she wondered if they were just telling her what she wanted to hear, until
one asked her, “How did you like your dollhouse?”
He had been with her father when he
bought the present in Thailand, and she asked him how he could possibly
remember such a thing.
He explained that the small event
was memorable for him because it was a rare moment of normalcy in the chaos and
destruction of war. And she realized how many others were affected by her
father’s disappearance 46 years ago.
‘Not one word’
If someone in the room didn’t get
the meaning of the POW/MIA flag before Friday, they left the room with a better
understanding.
Vietnam veteran A.J. Perrone was one
person in attendance who “got it” long before Friday’s ceremony.
Since the day he was almost left
behind to become one of the Missing during his service in the Vietnam War, he
has been driven to visit every state capital and even the Nation’s Capital on
multiple occasions to fight for the honor and meaning of the POW/MIA flag, and
to secure for families like the Stonebrakers the simple respect that is the
very least owed to them.
And while he briefly savors a few
victories in his mission of education, a day like National POW/MIA Recognition
Day drives home the fact that the words, “You Are Not Forgotten,” ring hollow
for too many people – including here in this heavily military community.
“The saddest part of this day,” said
Perrone, “is when you put your TV on in the morning checking the national news
and then the Nashville news and not one word is said about today being a
National Day of Observance.”
At least for the few people who
attended Friday’s ceremony at Fort Campbell, there was a rare chance to make a
personal connection with the meaning of the black and white POW/MIA flag that
is seen across the country every day, and yet not really seen at all.
And maybe now they can explain it to
someone else.
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