News-Info-Alerts

Re: Memorial Day 2002

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: May 29, 2002

"Thousands rally in D.C. for missing pilot
Veterans, friends demand he not be forgotten

By Paul Pinkham
Times-Union staff writer
WASHINGTON -- Anne Nicholson of Bethlehem Township, N.J., gently kissed the prisoner of war bracelet bearing the name of Jacksonville Navy pilot Scott Speicher, missing since the first night of the Persian Gulf War.

"I saw his picture, and I just connected with him. He could be my brother," said Nicholson, who has been wearing the metal bracelet since the Navy changed Speicher's status from killed to missing in action last year.

Nicholson is national secretary of the POW/MIA support group Rolling Thunder, which held its annual Memorial Day weekend rally at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial Sunday. More than 300,000 people attended, including members of Speicher's Forrest High School class of '75, roaring across the Potomac in a motorcycle parade from the Pentagon.

"There's a live prisoner of war in Iraq," singer Brit Small, a Vietnam veteran, told the crowd. "Scott Speicher, where are you? Bring him home."

Speicher's FA-18 Hornet fighter jet was shot down over the Iraqi desert in January 1991. He was declared dead, but the Navy changed his status last year to MIA based on intelligence, an investigation of the crash site and reports from Iraqi defectors who claim to have seen the Cecil Field airman alive as late as January.

Despite the change in classification, the Pentagon has remained cautious, saying most reports are unconfirmed and there is no evidence Speicher is alive or dead.

"Is Scott Speicher alive today? We don't know," said Dolores Apodaca Alfond of Bellevue, Wash., chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families. "Whatever the truth is, Scott Speicher deserves the best efforts of this nation."

Alfond was one of several speakers who called on the huge crowd

Among the most passionate speeches was one by Nikki Mendicino, a Pennsylvania 13-year-old who has collected more than 6,600 signatures on an online petition demanding Speicher's return.

"I have a message for President Bush and members of Congress," the fiery teenager shouted. "Bring Cmdr. Scott Speicher back to the United States where he belongs. Now. And if you can't do it, I'm sure I know several hundred thousand veterans who will."

Celebrities also attended, including singer Nancy Sinatra, former Miss America Heather French Henry and '60s rockers Paul Revere and the Raiders. Revere rode to the rally wearing a motorcycle helmet topped by a Revolutionary War-era three-cornered hat.

The support for their friend was music to the ears of four Northeast Florida men who are part of a group organized by Speicher's graduating class. They left Jacksonville on Friday and rode to the rally Sunday in a military supply truck as part of the Rolling Thunder parade. Though they weren't on the agenda to speak, they spent much of the weekend distributing stickers and T-shirts with Speicher's picture to all takers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Nikki Mendicino, 13, listens to speeches during a rally for pilot Scott Speicher. She gave a fiery speech of her own during the event, calling for action on Speicher's case.
-- The Associated Press
------------------------------------------------------------------------"It's really unfortunate it's taken 11 years," said David Todd, a 20-year Army veteran who graduated from Forrest with Speicher. "People are looking for hope everywhere, and that's what this is all about. ... I know Scott has hope, and if Scott didn't have hope he wouldn't have made it this long."

Most in the crowd seemed aware of Speicher's plight thanks to recent media attention. But not all.

James Williams, a Rolling Thunder member from Harpers Ferry, W.Va., studied newspaper articles about his case plastered to the side of a souvenir stand near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

"I can't believe it. I had no idea someone was left behind," Williams said.

Inside the stand, Donna Long was hawking POW bracelets. Most named Vietnam vets, but there was a section reserved for Persian Gulf POWs. Only one name was included: Speicher, the only American still unaccounted for from the Gulf War.

Long said she's been selling Speicher POW bracelets since 1997, back when the Pentagon still listed him as killed.

"We're the people everybody said were crazy," she said.

Not Anne Nicholson. She said she started wearing Speicher's bracelet because "it's unprecedented that any branch of the American military has ever admitted making a mistake.

"It lends some credibility to our mission," she said. "Sometimes, yes, this does happen."

Staff writer Paul Pinkham can be reached at (904) 359-4107 or via e-mail at ppinkham@jacksonville.com.
© The Florida Times-Union "