Ref No: J25

One hot August night in 1966, a young pilot on his way to Vietnam walked back into my life. I had fled from him awhile back amid strong emotional turmoil unrelated to our relationship. My promise was to return to Alaska, but I never did. I was in Alabama working at a nearby missile base when he called. He wanted to see me and I gave him my address as we made plans to get together that evening.

The time seemed to fall away that night as we caught up on all that had gone on in our lives in the recent past. I told him that I was seeing someone else and even as I spoke the words, I was aware that my heart was racing. In response to his question, I said that it was too soon to know if it was serious. We talked long into the night, knowing that early morning would find him flying back to Alaska to ready for deployment to Vietnam the following month. As for me, well, I was keenly aware of someone across town waiting for my phone call.

As we said our good-byes in the early morning hours, he promised that he would find me when he returned and that we would see where we stood at that time. He emphasized that no decision should be made standing in a hallway in the wee hours of the morning in the midst of so much emotion. As he turned to leave, I clearly remember thinking that I would probably marry him one day.

I never heard from him again.

We all have people who have impacted our lives in profound ways and, for me, he was one of those people. I have kept him with me through these thirty-odd years, but the memories have always been tarnished just a little because all evidence implied that his words weren’t true. Yet I instinctively knew he had cared for me. Who knows, maybe he met someone over there. Maybe he tried to find me and couldn’t – I had moved to another state. For whatever reason, my instincts and the facts were at odds for all those years. I would often find myself thinking of him, calculate his age and try to put a face to the calculation. I’ve wondered where he was, who he was with, how many children he had, what he had done with his life. Of course, I wondered if he ever thought of me.

Very late at night recently I was catching up with reading on OD and stopped in at ~Voyageur’s. In the entry I read, she mentioned doing a search on Google. I went there out of curiosity and spent an enjoyable couple of hours searching for people, places and things. Just before signing off for the night, I thought of him, slowly typed in his name and clicked on ‘search’. The computer whirred and answered me:

 Ref No: J25

 Name(Nickname): Jxxx Mxxxxxxxxx Jxxxxxxxx

 Activity Assigned: 20th Avn Detachment/223 Aviation Battalion

 Location: Attopeu Province

 In (mo/yr):

 Out (mo/yr): November 1966

 Call Sign: Project 6

 Job & AFSC/MOS: OV1A Observer

 “Rank”: Captain (O3)

 Service:USA

 Last Rank: Captain (O3)

 Sources: 141,142,155

 Notes: MIA/KIA/BNR – Air (OV1A Ser # 13115) 11/19/66; Crashed during armed reconnaissance mission vic 145639N 1071300E approx 10 mi ENE Muong May; Refno 0526-0-02.

 Contact:

 Last Update: January 20, 2001

661119 152300N 1063800E OV1A 0526-0-02 Jxxxxxxxx Observer KIA Project 6 223 Avn Bn

It seems thirty-six years would have dimmed the impact of that death notice, but it was as if it had just happened. The bruised hurt I had felt at his failure to contact me, the wondering thoughts of him…all those thoughts during all those years and now, to find he had been killed less than three months after I last saw him. How could that have happened and I not be aware somehow? There is a part of me that should have known, though I don’t know how I could have.

Even though this is the end of the story, I know I will go back through those years and rethink it all. I have to put it into another context, give it a new slant and update it with my newfound knowledge. But no, I realize that this is not the end of the story at all. He’s been alive in my heart, mind and memory for all these years – nothing has changed…nothing will change. He’s still that rakish young Lieutenant and somewhere he and Thumper are smiling together.

In November of 2000, I posted two entries on Open Diary. I am re-posting them here because it seems right to do so, it was part of our story.