News-Info-Alerts

Re: Family Questions Identification

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: June 21, 2002

"S.C. family to attend dual funeral
Associated Press

COLUMBIA - An S.C. family will bury the remains of a U.S. soldier killed in Vietnam that the Defense Department says are those of Air Force Master Sgt. Thomas Heideman.

The family, which is going to participate in the military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington, D.C., isn't so sure.

"They haven't been able to positively identify the remains as being him," said daughter Cathy Long of Sumter.

"This is a formality," said another daughter, Mary Ann Buonforte of Columbia. "This is the way the military closes out these cases."

The children agreed to the burial for the sake of their grandmother, Heideman's mother, who is 92. "This is something she has waited for a long time," Buonforte said. "She deserves this."

On Oct. 24, 1970, Chicago native Heideman, who had been stationed at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, and Capt. Craig Schiele were crew members of a CH-3E "Black Maria" helicopter.

The chopper was the lead of a two-ship formation on a clandestine mission to rescue friendly soldiers from Laos, according to the military. The flight was secret because Congress had forbidden the U.S. military from going into Laos and Cambodia, which border Vietnam.

After taking on the Laotians, the helicopter, piloted by Schiele, crashed into a dense jungle. Eight Laotians and two U.S. servicemen were rescued on the day of the crash. A search the next day turned up no additional survivors.

A body, later identified as Schiele's, was the only one recovered at that time. There were no sightings of Heideman. He was listed initially as missing in action, then "killed in action, body not returned."

Buonforte says she doesn't think her father was on the helicopter. A written statement from a staff sergeant who survived the crash said he didn't see the 36-year-old Heideman or his remains.

The Defense Department said the crash site was burned so DNA samples couldn't establish a positive identification. None of the artifacts at the site, including hundreds of bone fragments, a half-dozen teeth and pieces of a flight suit, was identified as Heideman's.

The remains, along with those of Schiele, will be buried together Friday at the ceremony at Arlington. Both names will be inscribed on a single tombstone.

The military couldn't identify the remains to the extent that would allow a separate burial, said Lt. Col. Tom Erstfeld, a spokesman for the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office in Washington. But he said a close family member signed off on the burial plans.

The Heideman family agrees the two men deserve a decent burial, but it won't bring them closure.

"I feel there is other information the government is not willing to release to us," Buonforte said. "I'm sure they think they're doing everything they can, but if there is information out there that might shed more light on this, after 32 years, why hold it?"

Heideman's wife, Patricia, died in 1979, never knowing what happened to her husband. And his mother worried that she wouldn't be able to make it when the service -- initially planned for Sept. 13, 2001 -- was postponed because of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

A year after the crash, Heideman was awarded the Air Force's most prestigious award, the Distinguished Flying Cross. His wife accepted it during a ceremony at Shaw in 1971.

Of Heideman's five children, four are living. He has one other daughter who lives in Niceville, Fla. Each plans to travel to Washington for the funeral. They said their father, who loved to take photographs, fish and fly, deserves this honor."