In 1969 I was in the kitchen with my mom, helping with the ironing, with the radio on. Ray Adell was just finishing up his fishing report: "Throw the small ones back, save a few for me!" The friendly familiar tag line was interrupted by a news flash, "...married couple in parachuting accident in Laos this morning..."
My mother became hysterical. Her little sister, my aunt Polly* was there with her two children and ex-marine husband Tim*, working to support peaceful trade with the Hmong people. Both Polly and Tim were avid sport parachutists; Tim was a helicopter pilot.
I was only eight years old. As far as I knew, everyone had both an aunt and uncle and two cousins in Southeast Asia. They were far from where the war was, right? I couldn't console my mother with this -- she knew darned well there was fighting nearby, and she explained that there were only a few people over there it could possibly be.
The afternoon was filled with fruitless calls to their home in Vientiane, their other home in Okinawa, and to the State Department. State didn't know anything. Their 'tenants' in Okinawa (we later learned it wasn't their house at all, but rather a safe house) hadn't heard anything. Their employer, Air America, didn't return our calls.
The next day, my mother received a letter from Polly, airmailed out from the not-a-war-zone over a week earlier. She and Tim were planning a sport jump to an island in the Mekong to celebrate their wedding anniversary. My mother's heart broke in two that day. I had never seen her cry like that. Never.
Weeks of calling State and demanding answers, providing key information to them (note: State has the whole CIA providing them with their intelligence. We had a family phone book and a radio. Guess who had more information? The team with the Mommy, of course!) Finally, State admitted that there had been "parachute malfunctions" and would at least admit that, yes, in fact Polly and Tim had died.
State hadn't quite counted on Polly having a mom and 9 brothers and sisters, all but my mom avid sport parachutists. Her older sister and brother worked as riggers and jump masters, and my grandmother was a founding member of "Grandparents Association of Sport Parachutists" -- G.A.S.P.!
We questioned the plausibility of two double malfunctions on the same jump (they both had reserve chutes). State started throwing around phrases like "Mae West" and "Streamer" -- but none of their descriptions would have washed with anyone who'd ever actually participated in the sport. They then said she'd made a water landing, and he had followed her into the drink to try to cut her away, and became fouled in her lines, drowning along side her. Hence the two sealed caskets that arrived a week later, for the funeral. But oddly, no account of how the bodies were recovered from the mighty murky Mekong.
What we do know is this: they were living in Laos, they were working for Air America, they did go parachuting on their wedding anniversary, and they both came back from Laos in sealed caskets. Their two children were adopted by a childless military couple in -- get this -- San Clemente . My grandmother tried, but failed, to get custody, and in fact lost her house trying due to lawyers bills. (Shades of the Official Story and the Grandmothers of the Disappeared.)
So. This is in memoriam for the civilian loved ones who have died working in our war zones doing we'll-never-know-what, for their families whose grief will never find closure, for all the Laotian civilians who died in the later carpet bombing of that beautiful land courtesy of Kissinger and Nixon -- but mostly for my mother, who never saw her baby sister again -- not even in death.
NB Air America was secretly acquired by the CIA in 1950, and Sen. Harry Reid (D, NV) has been trying to secure proper recognition -- and benefits -- for the men and women who served and died.
Enjoy the music.
*I have altered their names for reasons of privacy. Which is weird for a memoriam.