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Re: Only USCG MIA Comes Homes to Arlington

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 18, 2003

"Never missing from their hearts

by Molly Kavanaugh Plain Dealer Reporter

All his life, Jack Rittichier was a man with a mission. Captain of the Kent State football team, U.S. Coast Guard helicopter pilot, eager to learn, teach and make people around him feel comfortable and confident.

He volunteered for Vietnam not to kill but to save lives, he told his younger brother, Dave. So while his family's hearts were heavy as he prepared to leave in the spring of 1968, Jack Rittichier's was full of purpose.
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"I'm doing exactly what I want to do," the 34-year-old Barberton native told his brother.

In two months Jack Rittichier was dead, his helicopter shot down as he tried to rescue a downed pilot.

For 35 years, he was listed as missing in action, and still he gained more friends. Strangers wore his MIA bracelet, impressed by his heroics and status as the Coast Guard's only missing person.

Now his remains have been recovered, and the family was notified last week that they were positively identified as Rittichier's. Dave Rittichier is preparing a fond farewell this fall for his brother.

Arlington National Cemetery's "Coast Guard Hill" is reserved for commandants and other senior officials, but Adm. Thomas Collins said he would make an exception and allow Lt. Rittichier to be buried there, spokeswoman Jolie Shifflet said.

The family has accepted the offer.

"I believe Jack would appreciate it. He really believed in the Coast Guard," said Dave Rittichier, 68, who lives in Erwin, Tenn., with his wife, Maggie.

Along with family and friends, Dave Rittichier is inviting to the funeral men and women he knows only through e-mails and letters.

"Jack was a hero to me all my life, and if they appreciate him, God bless them," he said.

The date of the funeral has not been set, but Janet Herron in Salt Lake City is already making plans to attend. A year ago, the 50-year-old woman, in the midst of a per sonal research project about the Vietnam War, decided to wear an MIA bracelet.

"I asked for one from the Coast Guard, and there was one," she said.

She bought two bracelets with Jack Rittichier's name, thinking that if his body was ever recovered she would send one bracelet to the family and keep the other for herself.

She figured the likelihood of that happening, though, was as remote as the site where Jack Rittichier disappeared. "They're not even looking," she thought - incorrectly, it turned out.

By the time his remains were found last spring, Herron felt like Jack Rittichier was an old friend.

Several Web sites and links are devoted to him, along with the names of other MIA supporters. Herron has found them all.

In recent months, Herron has also gotten to know Dave and Maggie Rittichier and Jack's widow, Carol Wypick, who remarried and lives in California.

"It's like I've known these people forever," she said.

Those who did get to know Jack Rittichier say he was a man to admire. In 1967, Dennis Collins of Bay Village was stationed at the Selfridge Air Force Base in Mount Clemens, Mich., where a hangar now bears Rittichier's name.

"Everyone wanted to fly with him because he was good and he would have the best chance of getting everyone back," Collins wrote in an e- mail, recalling a freakish November snowstorm on Lake Huron in which Rittichier and another pilot risked their lives to rescue 15 to 20 men off an ore boat.

Dave Rittichier never got to fly with his brother. "I missed out on that," he said.

For years, he figured he would miss out on saying a final goodbye, too, which is the other reason he welcomes the attention that will come from an Arlington burial.

There are 1,883 Americans still missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.

"What I hope is to let people know they're still looking," he said.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mkavanaugh@plaind.com, 1-800-767-2821

© 2003 The Plain Dealer"