News-Info-Alerts

Re: Coming Home

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: May 26, 2002

"Pilot finally coming home

By BURTON COLE Tribune Chronicle

Green tarnish covers portions of the battered dog tag. Some of the letters and numbers are eaten through from being buried for 35 years in wet, acidic soil.
The name remains legible: ''Cutrer, Fred.''

In 11 days, the long-missing Vietnam War fighter pilot will come home to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

''It's kind of closure for the full thing,'' Fred Cutrer III, 40, of Canfield said. ''To me, it's an honor he's going to be buried in Arlington.''

Fred and brother Donald Cutrer, 39, also of Canfield, grew up on the North Side of Youngstown uncertain of their father's fate.

The boys were 1 and 3 when U.S. Air Force Capt. Fred Clay Cutrer Jr.'s B-57B Canberra was shot down on Aug. 6, 1964, over South Vietnam. He was among the first wave of President Johnson's military response to an attack on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin and the beginning of full-scale American involvement in the war.

''In the back of my mind, I always thought there was a chance, maybe. ... But the longer time went on, I knew,'' said Fred III, an engineer at Roth Brothers in Austintown who retired from the 910th Airlift Wing Civil Engineer Squadron about five years ago after 19 1/2 years in the Reserves.

The 29-year-old pilot was listed as missing in action. When the Vietnam Wall Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., in 1982, Cutrer's name was on it. First panel, east side, Line 60.

The biographical paragraph states simply that he died while missing in Long Khanh, and his body was not recovered.

The first rays of hope came in August 1992 when the Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office found the crash site. Follow-up visits led to an excavation in March and April 1997.

''They found him in a crater 10 feet deep,'' said Donald Cutrer, an engineer at Waco Scaffolding and Equipment in Akron, and a chief reserve loadmaster flying out of the Youngstown Air Force Reserve Station.

''They were ready to close the site. They'd gone deeper than any other site. It was at that point they found Dad's dog tags, then part of the aircraft with the aircraft ID plate, and then the life-support equipment.''

The Cutrer family was notified in January 1998 of the discovery of bone fragments possibly belonging to the pilot and his navigator, 1st Lt. Leonard Kaster of Massachusetts.

Skeletal remains were few. The family opted against having any more of the remains taken for DNA testing. The dog tag and other evidence was enough.

The family did not talk publicly about Cutrer's homecoming until the last month when all confirmations and arrangements were made. His remains will be flown in from Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.

''On June 6, we'll bury him and his navigator in Arlington National Cemetery,'' Donald said.

The sons' mother, a 1st lieutenant who was honorably discharged as an Air Force nurse in 1962 after becoming pregnant with Fred III, will be exhumed and buried beside her husband's plot on June 4.

Knowing that their father gave his all in service to his country did not deter the boys from following in their parents' paths.

''Our whole family has been in the military, all our uncles and cousins,'' Fred III said.

''I don't know how people can be anti-military living in this country,'' Donald said. ''It is the military that gave us the freedoms we have. Especially me flying around the world, I see the conditions they are living in other countries, and when we come home, our worst day is their best day.''

Memorial Day is an excellent time to salute not just military heroes but all those who have gone on before.

''It's a day everyone can remember friends and family no longer with us.

''I usually spend my Memorial Day flying low passes for the parades. Then I go home or to my brother's home for the traditional hot dogs and hamburgers,'' Donald said.

But this year, traditions will mean a little more to the Cutrer brothers, knowing Dad is finally coming home.
Copyright © 2002 Tribune Chronicle"