Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)
September 19, 2008
Pg. 1
By Carol Ann Alaimo, Arizona Daily Star
Late this morning, four warplanes will fly over Tucson, leaving a space for one that is absent. For many, the sight will only be a curiosity, but Isabel "Billie" Sanchez will be looking up with a lump in her throat.
"Every time I see it, it hurts. It feels like my heart is popping out of my chest," Sanchez said of the military's Missing Man Formation.
It's a scene that takes her back 40 years, to when her teenage nephew used to write letters and send her recipes from Vietnam — correspondence that stopped the day the Southern Arizona soldier went missing in action.
Decades later, Sanchez and her family are still waiting for news that never comes — word that Specialist 5th Class Armando Ramirez has been found and that his body is coming home for a proper funeral.
"It's terrible not knowing," said Sanchez 68, of her 19-year-old nephew, who volunteered for the Army and his second combat tour.
"You want to believe that he's resting in peace. But then your mind plays tricks and you think maybe he isn't really gone," she said.
The Defense Department told the family that Ramirez couldn't have survived a helicopter crash overseas in 1969, Sanchez said. But without remains to bury, "it's hard to let go."
The torment of not knowing is shared by families across Southern Arizona — and about 88,000 nationwide — with loved ones lost or taken prisoner in America's wars.
Several local survivors will take part today in services at Tucson's veterans hospital marking national Prisoner of War-Missing in Action (POW-MIA) Day.
Some are mired in unresolved grief. Others search relentlessly for answers, going to workshops, giving blood samples for DNA testing and combing through news clippings and government records.
A Pentagon official said the government is making strides in recovery efforts, with technology akin to that on the "CSI" television shows.
Some family members like Eleanor Apodaca, 69, of Tucson, are convinced their lost loved ones are still alive and that the U.S. government hasn't tried hard enough to find them.
Apodaca's brother, Air Force Maj. Victor Apodaca of Colorado, was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967. She is haunted by thoughts that he is now a 71-year-old prisoner.
In Apodaca's case, Defense Department searchers said in 2001 that they recovered bone fragments belonging to the F-4 pilot. After DNA testing, the remains were sent to his sons in Colorado, who accepted the government's findings and held a funeral for their father.
That ended up fracturing the family, Eleanor Apodaca said, because she and several of her sisters don't believe the government is telling the truth.
Their skepticism stems in part, she said, from anonymous phone calls the family received for years after her brother was lost, saying he was alive and a prisoner. So the sisters continue their search for clues, amassing mountains of documents even though the Defense Department insists there are no troops from past wars still captive overseas.
"If I give up, I would feel like I was letting my brother down," Eleanor Apodaca said.
Daniel Zeigler of Tucson is on a similar quest. His brother, Air Force 1st Lt. Joseph Zeigler of Illinois, was shot down in the Korean War in 1953.
Since 1993, when Zeigler retired from his job as a missile-maker at the former Hughes Aircraft in Tucson, he's made it his mission to find out what happened to his sibling. He's attended family meetings the Defense Department conducts, sent away to the Pentagon for reams of information and submitted a blood sample to be used for DNA testing in case remains are recovered.
"My brother was a good guy. He went to church. He had a son he never got to meet," said Zeigler, now 75. His brother would be pushing 80.
"I keep thinking, 'What if the poor guy is still over there?' It bothers me a lot, not knowing."
A spokesman for the Pentagon department that oversees recovery efforts, the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, said the agency often hears from families who think the government isn't trying hard enough to find the missing.
That's not true, said Larry Greer, a Vietnam veteran. Many recovery personnel are current military members or retired combat troops who empathize with how their own families would feel if they'd gone to war and hadn't returned, he said.
About 600 personnel work full time, often in perilous conditions, to locate remains of the missing, Greer said. Since the 1970s, eight have died during recovery missions, and searchers commonly face threats ranging from poisonous jungle snakes to tropical diseases.
The teams speak multiple languages and follow up on every reported sighting of a live prisoner or remains, he said. Typically, they identify 75 to 100 missing personnel each year, although some cases can take decades to crack, especially when remains are mixed and scattered, as in aircraft crashes.
The federal government spends more than $100 million a year on the efforts. Today the job is made easier by high-tech advances such as computer programs that can scan a shard of a broken eyeglass lens or a single tooth from a crash site and compare it with the dental and vision records of all POW-MIAs.
"To help bring closure to a family, it's very rewarding," Greer said. "We haven't forgotten these families, and we want them to know that."
September 19, 2008
Pg. 1
By Carol Ann Alaimo, Arizona Daily Star
Late this morning, four warplanes will fly over Tucson, leaving a space for one that is absent. For many, the sight will only be a curiosity, but Isabel "Billie" Sanchez will be looking up with a lump in her throat.
"Every time I see it, it hurts. It feels like my heart is popping out of my chest," Sanchez said of the military's Missing Man Formation.
It's a scene that takes her back 40 years, to when her teenage nephew used to write letters and send her recipes from Vietnam — correspondence that stopped the day the Southern Arizona soldier went missing in action.
Decades later, Sanchez and her family are still waiting for news that never comes — word that Specialist 5th Class Armando Ramirez has been found and that his body is coming home for a proper funeral.
"It's terrible not knowing," said Sanchez 68, of her 19-year-old nephew, who volunteered for the Army and his second combat tour.
"You want to believe that he's resting in peace. But then your mind plays tricks and you think maybe he isn't really gone," she said.
The Defense Department told the family that Ramirez couldn't have survived a helicopter crash overseas in 1969, Sanchez said. But without remains to bury, "it's hard to let go."
The torment of not knowing is shared by families across Southern Arizona — and about 88,000 nationwide — with loved ones lost or taken prisoner in America's wars.
Several local survivors will take part today in services at Tucson's veterans hospital marking national Prisoner of War-Missing in Action (POW-MIA) Day.
Some are mired in unresolved grief. Others search relentlessly for answers, going to workshops, giving blood samples for DNA testing and combing through news clippings and government records.
A Pentagon official said the government is making strides in recovery efforts, with technology akin to that on the "CSI" television shows.
Some family members like Eleanor Apodaca, 69, of Tucson, are convinced their lost loved ones are still alive and that the U.S. government hasn't tried hard enough to find them.
Apodaca's brother, Air Force Maj. Victor Apodaca of Colorado, was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967. She is haunted by thoughts that he is now a 71-year-old prisoner.
In Apodaca's case, Defense Department searchers said in 2001 that they recovered bone fragments belonging to the F-4 pilot. After DNA testing, the remains were sent to his sons in Colorado, who accepted the government's findings and held a funeral for their father.
That ended up fracturing the family, Eleanor Apodaca said, because she and several of her sisters don't believe the government is telling the truth.
Their skepticism stems in part, she said, from anonymous phone calls the family received for years after her brother was lost, saying he was alive and a prisoner. So the sisters continue their search for clues, amassing mountains of documents even though the Defense Department insists there are no troops from past wars still captive overseas.
"If I give up, I would feel like I was letting my brother down," Eleanor Apodaca said.
Daniel Zeigler of Tucson is on a similar quest. His brother, Air Force 1st Lt. Joseph Zeigler of Illinois, was shot down in the Korean War in 1953.
Since 1993, when Zeigler retired from his job as a missile-maker at the former Hughes Aircraft in Tucson, he's made it his mission to find out what happened to his sibling. He's attended family meetings the Defense Department conducts, sent away to the Pentagon for reams of information and submitted a blood sample to be used for DNA testing in case remains are recovered.
"My brother was a good guy. He went to church. He had a son he never got to meet," said Zeigler, now 75. His brother would be pushing 80.
"I keep thinking, 'What if the poor guy is still over there?' It bothers me a lot, not knowing."
A spokesman for the Pentagon department that oversees recovery efforts, the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, said the agency often hears from families who think the government isn't trying hard enough to find the missing.
That's not true, said Larry Greer, a Vietnam veteran. Many recovery personnel are current military members or retired combat troops who empathize with how their own families would feel if they'd gone to war and hadn't returned, he said.
About 600 personnel work full time, often in perilous conditions, to locate remains of the missing, Greer said. Since the 1970s, eight have died during recovery missions, and searchers commonly face threats ranging from poisonous jungle snakes to tropical diseases.
The teams speak multiple languages and follow up on every reported sighting of a live prisoner or remains, he said. Typically, they identify 75 to 100 missing personnel each year, although some cases can take decades to crack, especially when remains are mixed and scattered, as in aircraft crashes.
The federal government spends more than $100 million a year on the efforts. Today the job is made easier by high-tech advances such as computer programs that can scan a shard of a broken eyeglass lens or a single tooth from a crash site and compare it with the dental and vision records of all POW-MIAs.
"To help bring closure to a family, it's very rewarding," Greer said. "We haven't forgotten these families, and we want them to know that."