News-Info-Alerts

Re: The End of the Story

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 29, 2003

"'The end of the story'

Wednesday, May 28, 2003
By Susan K. Treutler CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER
WITH WIRE REPORTS

On March 9, 1968, the family of Lt. j.g. Philip P. Stevens had a funeral for him at St. Mary's of the Woods Catholic Church in Lakewood Club.
Information from our Advertisers

But the casket was empty, because Stevens was a Navy aviator listed as missing in action after a crash in Laos.

On June 3, more than 35 years after his death, Philip Stevens will finally be laid to rest in his grave here at home.

The U.S. Navy says it has positively identified the remains of Stevens, two other fliers from Michigan and six others who disappeared in a 1968 plane crash in Laos.

Stevens and his crew were lost when their plane crashed on a Laotian mountaintop during the Vietnam War. The crash site was identified and visited by a military recovery unit in 1996 and remains were recovered in 2001.

Stevens' parents, Mildred and Paul Stevens of Twin Lake, are buried near the grave that waits for their youngest child. Mildred Stevens died in 2001 knowing there were people searching for her son.

Richard Stevens, 68, of Oakland County's Commerce Township said the Navy recovered the dog tags, teeth and several bones of his brother Philip.

He said his younger brother was 25 when he disappeared. Stevens said he accepted years ago that his brother had died. The Navy told him there were photos of the site and there was little possibility anyone survived.

Over the years, the Navy briefed Stevens on developments.

The latest news confirmed what he already believed.

"It's the end of the story," he said.

Stevens' sister, Joy Warren of

White Lake, northwest of Detroit, said today she doesn't know exactly how to feel about her brother's remains finally being identified.

"It has been so long," she said.

The Michigan men, in addition to Stevens, are Petty Officers 2nd Class Donald N. Thoresen and Kenneth H. Widon, both of Detroit.

The remains of the men that could not be identified will be buried June 18 in a joint observance at Arlington National Cemetery.

The men were aboard a Navy OP-2E Neptune plane that crashed into a mountain in Laos in January 1968. The remains were recovered during six U.S.-Lao missions to the crash site between 1993 and last year, the Pentagon said Tuesday in a news release.

The announcement means Suzanne Valenti finally can put to rest the memory of her brother, Widon.

"I always had hope that he was going to come walking through that door one day," the Brighton woman told the Detroit Free Press.

The Pentagon said Widon and Stevens left a base in Thailand with the crew on Jan. 11, 1968, to drop sensors in Laos to detect enemy movements. The crew reported the plane's descent through dense clouds in its last radio transmission.

Two weeks later, an Air Force crew photographed what was believed to have been the crash site, but enemy activity in the area prevented a recovery operation, the statement said.

Investigators interviewed villagers near the site and found debris on two ledges of Phou Louang mountain in the Khammouan province of Laos. Searches were conducted by the Navy's Killed In Action Body Recovery team from Honolulu.

The teams recovered identification cards for several crew members during a 1996 visit. Other visits yielded human remains and other identifying items from the wreckage.

The recovery is undertaken by the military's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting Office, which since its formation in 1992 has embarked on about 600 searches and digs looking for lost soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. The effort -- restricted to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia -- includes the expertise of archaeologists, forensic and mortuary specialists, and linguists operating on $100 million annual budgets.

The 1996 find of the plane put to rest wondering about exactly where the crew went down and what happened to them. But it has been another long wait for identifications to take place.

Joy Warren and Richard Stevens had given blood samples to authorities, hoping that DNA matching could identify their brother.

Stevens, who was single, was a graduate of North Muskegon High School and earned a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota.

He earned his Navy wings in 1967.

© 2003 Muskegon Chronicle"