Vietnam-era MIA may be identified after 36 years

Columbus Ledger-Enquirer - Columbus, GA, USA

Vietnam-era MIA may be identified after 36 years
The Associated Press

DALTON, Ga. --Christine Jones was baking brownies for the National Guard when the military called to tell her they might have found her son's remains nearly four decades after the flight surgeon went missing during the Vietnam War.

Maj. Bobby M. Jones' F4 jet disappeared from radar near Danang in South Vietnam on Nov. 28, 1972. Since then, the assumption was that he had died, but his family could never be sure because his remains were never recovered.

"We know that two people in that plane - an F4 is a two-seater - did not survive, and that Bobby was one of those," his sister, Jo Anne Shirley, told the Dalton Daily Citizen for a Thursday story.

But last week, Air Force Casualty Office personnel told her that someone had found a "blood chit," a military identification marker containing a number specific to her brother, who was born in Macon. A forensic anthropologist discovered it in June while evaluating the site where a plane that could've been her brother's had been excavated 11 years ago.

Shirley, who is chairwoman of the board of directors of the National League of Families and American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, said she and her 91-year-old mother cried at the news.

"It was like a big load is lifted off your heart," she said. "We've known for a good while, we have felt this was Bobby's crash site ... This is verification that he's not a prisoner, he probably didn't suffer, he was probably killed on impact."

A more extensive excavation of the site is planned, and the family must still wait for a written report from the military. Shirley said she was encouraged that her brother's remains could be found, but that already she has gotten more closure than most families - whom she still plans to fight for.

"This issue is not over for us," she said. "There are hundreds that we can recover and identify. There are a lot of families out there that can get the same closure we have if everybody will make sure that's not put on the back burner."