News-Info-Alerts

Re: Patty O'Grady and the POW-MIA Flag Flap

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: September 01, 2003

"POW-MIA flag means plenty

On behalf of my father, Col. John F. O’Grady USAF (POW-MIA), and on behalf of my husband, Major John W. Parsels (USA-Ret.), I would like to tell the people of Sanibel how distressed I am about the complaint on flying the POW/MIA flag on a city-owned flag pole.

My father was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, was awarded the Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart while a combat pilot in Vietnam. He held a master’s degree in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and did pioneering work in the development of booster rockets for NASA. In 1967, over the Mu Ghia pass on the border of Laos and Vietnam, his F-105D fighter jet was hit and he ejected. Captured by indigenous tribesman, the May and Bru tribes, he has never been returned home.

In 1993, I traveled in Russian jeeps for three days into remote mountains, with my three children, under armed guard, to the village of Y Lin to talk with Ho Cam and Ho Huan, who captured my father, in a failed attempt to discover his fate. After hiking for a day towards the border of Laos, to a heavily canopied hillside outside of Ba Ban Loc, I left my grandmother’s rosary (my father was their only child), a pack of cigarettes, a letter from his grandchildren and a small POW-MIA flag. That is what the POW- MIA flag means to me.

My husband, Major John W. Parsels, was a U.S. Army helicopter pilot captured in South Vietnam in 1970. Held in Laos for over a year, my husband (reported as a MIA) was marched north on crutches along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The same trail that we traveled together in 1993 in search of my father. My husband spent another two years in captivity in Hanoi and was released from the notorious Hanoi Hilton after total of three brutal years in captivity. His MIA status was not changed to POW until less than three months prior to his return. When he arrived in the Philippines, POW-MIA flags were waving along with the U.S. flag. That is what the POW-MIA flag means to me.

The POW-MIA flag holds special designation by Act of Congress, and can be flown anywhere the flag of the United States flies. To suggest that this flag, borne of incredible sacrifice and grief, has no more significance than the flag of a civic organization is to dishonor the men and women it represents. To suggest that it should only fly on a “special” day is highly insensitive. The POW-MIA flag is not reserved for a special holiday. It is a daily reminder that you live on Sanibel, enjoying privilege and peace, because of the men behind that flag. If it makes you uncomfortable, it should. No free people should ever get too comfortable or too far removed from the harsh realities of contemporary warfare, not even on Sanibel. If this flag, and all it represents, ruins your vacation or your day, then you of all people need to be reminded that the debt you owe is to pay attention.

PATTY O'GRADY, Sanibel
©2001, The News-Press"