News-Info-Alerts

Re: A Family's Final Farewell

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: November 07, 2003

"A family's final farewell

Warrant Officer Paul Black's remains are carried by a casket team during a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on Thursday.


ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) - Half a world and 32 years distant from where their son's helicopter went down, Jim and Jane Black of Port Orford, finally said farewell Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery.
Paul Vernon Black and three others were on an aerial reconnaissance mission over Cambodia when the chopper was shot down March 1, 1971.

Only the remains of the other three men were recovered and identified at the time. Not until this year was the Army able to confirm that fragments recovered in 1995 from the site belonged to Black, who was 22.

For his parents, the past 32 years have brought disbelief, anguish and frustration at not knowing if their son had died in the crash or was taken prisoner.

"He'd been POW-MIA for 32 years with no trace of anything," Jane Black said.

A dozen family members from four generations joined about 50 other mourners at a service for the four.
In a drizzle, an honor guard marched to their gravesite, saluting one casket for the group and another for Black alone.

After the ceremony, Darryl Black and Jolene Gruener remembered Paul as the smart, fun-loving brother who liked to tinker with cars and drive fast, but who signed up for officer training even as opposition to the war spread.

"He wasn't afraid to take on a challenge, right up to the end," Darryl Black said.

A cousin, Don Garner, didn't like being in the service but regarded it as the price of freedom. Paul, however, was serving his second tour in Vietnam - duty he volunteered for.

Garner recalled when Black flew in in his helicopter for a visit while both were in Vietnam. They talked about family and old times.

"I asked him why he re-enlisted, and he said he just felt that he wanted to be a warrant officer, and he wanted to do more for the country," Garner recalled. "Paul accepted the whole philosophy of what he was doing and 100 percent believed in it."

At the funeral service, Chaplain Douglas Fenton told mourners he hoped that Arlington cemetery, established to bury the nation's Civil War dead, would serve as "a place of profound peace" after their many years of uncertainty.

"I hope for you it can be as close to the Promised Land as we can provide on earth," he said.

For Jim and Jane Black, both in their 80s, it was close enough.
"Let's let this be the end," Jane Black said.

© 2003 Southwestern Oregon Publishing Company"