Family
to bury son 3 decades after he died in Vietnam fighting
WASHINGTON,
Ind. (AP) ‑ A former Indiana family is ‘preparing to bury their son,
more than three decades after his helicopter crashed in Vietnam.
Lester
and Margaret Padgett ‘will bury their only child, David, this spring at
Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
David
Padgett was just 24 years old and a major in the Army when the aircraft he was
piloting went down Feb. 6, 1969, killing him and his crew of six. His remains
were only recently identified using dental records.
Shortly
before the crash, Padgett had contacted a radio operator to report the chopper
would be landing at another site because of poor weather and visibility. But the
helicopter never appeared, and its crew was listed as missing in action for 31
years.
The
Padgetts, who now live in Naples, Fla., learned in 1977 that the crash site had
been located, but it could only be reached on foot.
In
1993 and again in 1996, the area was excavated, uncovering human remains and
helicopter wreckage.
The
Vietnamese government turned those remains over to the
U.S. government in October 1996, and they
were shipped to a laboratory in Hawaii.
Army
officials began analyzing the remains earlier this year, after collecting DNA
samples from crew members’ relatives, Margaret Padgett said.
The
Padgetts learned in November that their son’s remains had been identified.
David
Padgett graduated from Washington Catholic High School in 1962 and two years
later enlisted in the Army.
“He
had his flight orders to be an instructor when he got back,” Lester Padgett
said. “But in his last letter he said he might extend his time over there for
three more months.”
At
the time of the crash, David Padgett was in his last three weeks of duty.
“At
first he did staff work over there, and he thought he might do that if he
extended his time,” Margaret Padgett said. “But he liked to fly. I don’t
know if he would have made the Army his career, but whatever he did would have
to do with flying.”
There
are 1,992 American servicemen unaccounted for from the Vietnam conflict,
including 1,498 believed to have died in Vietnam, 421 in Laos, 65 in Cambodia
and eight in China.
