News-Info-Alerts

Re: Answers 30 Years Later

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: November 18, 2002

"Man died in rescue mission
Daughter learns details 3 decades later
BY WILL BUSS
wbuss@bnd.com

Willett, right, and her sister, Stacy Parsons, held their father's remains.

In her eyes, Donna Parsons Willett always thought her father was a hero.

Willett said she remembers her father, Lt. Col. Donald Eugene Parsons, as a man who died while fighting for his country in the Vietnam War. But recently she learned even more.

Parsons was born in Sparta on April 17, 1929. Willett said her father joined the U.S. Army when he turned 17 and served in both the Korean and Vietnam wars. On Feb. 5, 1969, Parsons had just finished spending some "R and R" with his wife in Hawaii when he returned to fighting in Vietnam.

The next day, Parsons and six other men, including a South Vietnamese major, were flying on a UH-1H Huey helicopter. While en route, the crew radioed that they were returning from their mission in the Quang Tri province because of poor weather conditions and reduced visibility.

The helicopter never returned, and searches for the missing men and aircraft were unsuccessful.

Parsons was 39.

Willett and her sister, Stacy, last saw their father the year before when he was deployed to Vietnam. Willett was 11, but she still remembers him very well.

"He was a real kind, funny guy," Willett said. "He loved a good laugh and joke. He was a good family man. Every Saturday was set aside for his girls."

Parsons' remains were never found after the crash. He was listed as MIA, or missing in action. Willett and her family thought her father may have been a prisoner of war.

Then, in 1985, some Vietnamese who were looking for the missing South Vietnamese major found the crash site and some human remains.

In December 1993, a joint U.S. and Vietnam investigation team interviewed several people in Quang Tri province, and one person claimed to have the remains of a missing serviceman. The remains were returned to the United States and submitted to the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for analysis.

Two years later, on July 16, 1995, another team of U.S. and Vietnamese investigators was able to determine that a helicopter had crashed at a remote site at the Huong Hoa District. Crews recovered debris, personal artifacts and human remains that matched the missing men and aircraft. This evidence also was also transported to the Hawaii laboratory.

More remains, personal artifacts and aircraft debris were recovered between July and October 1996. Eventually, researchers were able to make positive identifications of the missing servicemen by analyzing dental records and comparing skeletal fragments and DNA to maternal family members. But the remains of three others involved in the same accident have not been identified.

Then, two years ago this month, Willett said she received a call from the U.S. Army's mortuary affairs department. Two teeth found at the site were identified as her father's.

"This was pretty much out of the blue after 33 years of not knowing what had happened what to him," Willett said.

Unfortunately, Willett's mother had died the year before.

Finally, in March, Willett got a call that her father's remains and some artifacts would be released to her from the lab in Hawaii, including an army uniform with a lieutenant colonel's insignia on it. Her father was coming home.

On June 7, Willett's father received a funeral with full-military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Another funeral was recently held at the cemetery for Parsons and the other identified servicemen on Nov. 8.

Willett was able to find her father. But along the way, she also was able to learn about the day he died. While waiting to learn about the remains found at the crash site, she came in contact with people who knew her father and knew what happened.

One was Marine Capt. William Whorton, who now lives in Bangkok, Thailand. He wrote Willett a letter and told the story about that day, Feb. 6, 1969.

Whorton told her that her father was part of a rescue mission. Parsons and the six other men flew an emergency resupply chopper to help Marines who were had been stranded in Huong Hoa District for 10 days without food. Bad weather fpter to crash.

Willett said she was relieved to know that her father didn't suffer as a prisoner of war.

"The best thing about all of this was to find out that they died in the crash and didn't have to go through that horrible suffering, too," she said.

Parsons earned several honors including the Bronze Star, Combat Infantry Badge, Air Medal, National Defense Korean Medal, Vietnam Medal, Armed Forces Reserve Medal, United Nations Service Medal and the Purple Heart.

Willett said she and her sister were "army brats" and lived all over the country and overseas. She was born in Fort Knox in Kentucky and her sister in Germany.

Willett is now 46 and lives in Boone, N.C. Her sister, Stacy Parsons, is 44 and lives in Silver Spring, Md. Willett said she has some memories of her father's hometown from when she would visit her grandparents in Sparta.

"It was just a real small, little town, and we loved going to visit there," she said. "That's all I really remember about it. I was just a little kid."

She said she always knew her father was a hero. Now she knows why.

"He was always a hero to me," she said, "but come to find out he was even more of a hero trying to rescue someone else." "