Re: Her Soulmate Is Home

Date: February 22, 2004

"A 31-Year-Search For MIA Navy Pilot Comes To An End
 
By John Sharify KOMO 4 NEWS

Lt. Alan Clark was in the last Navy plane shot down in Vietnam; remains identified last month and he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
 

LYNNWOOD - He was the love of her life. Her husband. Her soulmate. Her everything.

"I just didn't want him to go," says Tonya Clark.

Alan Clark went. He went to Vietnam. And before it was all over, the A-6 Navigator based out of Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, would make history.

His shipmate from the USS Midway would write about him in his book: "I felt the tears pouring down my cheeks," Jim Horsley says.

Alan's wife would be haunted by the question: What if? What if the war had ended just two weeks earlier?

January 10th, 1973. Lt. Alan Clark's plane was shot down. It was the last Navy plane shot down in the war. Pilot Jim Horsley searched for the two Navy flyers.

"With my oxygen mask on, I'm sobbing tears," says Horsley.

They found nothing. Two weeks later, the Vietnam War ended. Troops started coming home.

"I remember when the guys came back. It was so hard seeing them flying in and they had the missing man formation and that was just so difficult," says Tonya.

For the next 31 years, Navigator Alan Clark and his pilot remained missing.

"When you go to war it's a hard thing," says Clark. A hard thing leaving your wife -- your pregnant wife -- to go to war.

Tad Clark was just two months and 10 days old when his father was killed in Vietnam.

"He never got to hold him and see him!" Tonya said.

Tad never met his father, but he would do something that would have made him proud. He followed in his footsteps. Tad Clark is an Air Force Captain stationed in Germany.

"He just wanted to be a fighter pilot all of his life," says Tonya Clark.

Tad Clark is 31 years old. It's how long his dad's been missing. Tonya has spent all these years living a quiet life in Lynnwood. She's a piano teacher. Tonya always had faith that one day, the military would find Alan.

And they have. Alan Clark's remains were finally found and identified through DNA. Last month, his shipmates and family helped bury Navy Lt. Alan Clark, the recipient of the Purple Heart, at Arlington National Cemetery.

"You just can't help by feel grateful and say 'Oh God this is so amazing' It is amazing," says Tonya Clark.

Tonya's soulmate; her best friend; her everything, is home.

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