Family: Dad 'was a hero'
By James R. Carroll • jcarroll@courier-journal.com
December 19, 2008
ARLINGTON, Va. -- As the band and honor guard marched away yesterday morning, Russell McElroy of Bowling Green, Ky., approached the casket containing the remains of his father and five other missing servicemen.
He placed a Bible on top of the silver casket, then put his hand on the Bible.
In his other hand, McElroy held the American flag he was presented in honor of his father, U.S. Air Force Maj. John McElroy of Eminence, Ky., who was buried with full honors in Arlington National Cemetery yesterday -- 40 years after he died in Vietnam.
"That was my grandfather's Bible," Russell McElroy said in an interview later. "I thought that was fitting to have my grandfather's Bible next to the casket. And I said a little prayer."
Maj. McElroy and his five companions were killed when their C-130 Hercules was shot down May 12, 1968, during operations evacuating Vietnamese civilians from the Kham Duc Special Forces Camp near Da Nang in what was then South Vietnam.
Most of their more than 150 passengers were women and children. None survived.
The American servicemen, listed as missing, were identified after their remains were recovered in 1993 and 1994. It took years of DNA testing and confirmation before authorities were ready to proceed with the burial.
McElroy's remains were buried in a single casket with those of Air Force Major Bernard Bucher, of Eureka, Ill.; Air Force 1st Lt. Stephen Moreland, of Los Angeles; Air Force Staff Sgt. Frank Hepler, of Glenside, Pa.; Air Force Airman 1st Class George Long, of Medicine, Kan.; and Army Capt. Warren Orr Jr., of Kewanee, Ill.
The remains were so comingled that there was no way to bury them separately, officials said.
But Orr also was buried in a second casket, because enough of his remains were uniquely identified to warrant a separate burial, according to Air Force Capt. Mary Olsen, spokeswoman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA Office.
Russell McElroy, 53, a probation and parole officer with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, was at Arlington for the first time.
"I was honored that my dad was placed in Arlington," he said. "As I looked around and saw all other tombstones, I thought he had done his duty to his country, and we were proud of him. He was a hero to us and a wonderful dad. Even though things turned out as they did, we have been truly blessed."
His sister, Mary McElroy Tucker, 51, of Louisville, said she was moved by the military service, with the Air Force Band, Army and Air Force honor guards, a firing party that provided a 21-gun salute and a bugler who played "Taps."
"I'm very grateful to my country," she said.
Air Force Reserve Chaplain Lt. Col. Karis Graham and Army Chaplain Maj. Stanton Trotter conducted the services.
Graham read from John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s poem, "High Flight," which begins: "Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth. …"
After the flags were removed from the caskets, a representative from each family was given a flag, folded in the military triangle, by Maj. Gen. Lawrence A. Stutzriem, director and chief of staff of the Air Force Strategic Studies Group -- CHECKMATE.
Mary Tucker had placed in the casket an Irish box containing soil from the Lexington, Ky., cemetery where there is a plaque with her father's name, as well as soil from Maj. McElroy's parents' grave. She also put in a lock of her hair.
Russell McElroy put his father's Bible into the casket, along with a picture of his mother, Regina, who died four years ago, and a lock of his father's hair from his first haircut.
Mary Tucker said her father's death 40 years ago, along with those of Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Catholic writer Thomas Merton, profoundly affected the direction of her life.
Now a nurse practitioner, "my mission is to heal and not to kill," she said. She added that she hoped President-elect Barack Obama would create a "Department of Peace" in his administration.
Linda McElroy Stearnes, 49, of Brownsville, Ky., said the family had been waiting 40 years for proper honors to be given to her father and the other men.
"Back in 1968, we didn't feel like we should talk about it," she said. "If you talked about it much, it was kind of like, 'Your daddy was a baby-killer.' "
But Stearnes, who works for the Edmonson County School District, believes her father and the other servicemen on the plane "did die heroes."
"They were evacuating the village. It was a rescue mission. Truly, those guys knew when they were going in it was a very, very dangerous situation. They knew they might not come back out, and they did it anyway."
"I'm glad after 40 years … they got recognition," she said.
Reporter James R. Carroll can be reached at (202) 906-8141.
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