'Never give up': Omaha vets, families honor POW/MIAs on remembrance day
Ron and Shirley Haase are members of a club no one wants to join.
On Dec. 28, 1965, Shirley Haase's brother, Spec. 5 Donald Grella, 25, of Laurel, Nebraska, went missing along with three other crew members aboard a UH-1 Huey helicopter when it disappeared on a mission near An Khe in the Central Highlands.
His family was left in limbo, his status listed as "missing, presumed dead." His mother died in 2006 without ever knowing what happened to him.
But Ron Haase — himself a Vietnam War veteran — considers his family one of the lucky ones. It took more than four decades, but Grella's remains and those of his fellow soldiers were recovered and returned in 2009.
Still, more than 81,000 service members remain unaccounted for from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the first Gulf War — their families still in the same limbo.
"MIA families are a great group that supports each other," said Ron Haase, who lives in Omaha.
It was for those missing, and their families, that Haase and about 75 people Friday at Omaha's Memorial Park to commemorate POW/MIA Recognition Day, established by Congress in 1998.
"This should be as important as any other day we honor veterans," said JR Richardson, director of Bellevue University's Military and Veteran Services Center. "The numbers (attending) should be so much higher, to honor the families so they don't give up hope."
Those attending included Dennis Pavlik, 92, of Omaha, who is Nebraska's last living prisoner of war from the Korean War; and Jose Puentes, the brother of Staff Sgt. Manuel Puentes of Omaha, whose body was never recovered after his patrol was ambushed in Vietnam March 25, 1971.
The veterans from American Legion Post 1 set up a "Missing Man Table" to represent those missing in action and remain unaccounted-for.
"They are commonly called POWs, MIAs," said Cmdr. Paul Taylor, a member of the post. "We call them brothers."
Taylor said the empty table was set with a white cloth, to symbolize the purity of the motives of the missing service members who took up arms to defend their country.
On the table: a vase holding a red rose, symbolizing the families of the missing who have waited for their return; and a candle, symbolizing the "unquenchable spirit" of those held prisoner. An inverted glass reminded visitors that the missing service member is not present to drink a toast with comrades.
"Remember," Taylor said, as he described the significance of each element. Each time, a bell rang.
Veterans also laid wreaths in memory of the missing. A bugler played taps.
Omaha is a center of efforts to recover and identify the missing from past wars because of the presence of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base.
The keynote speaker Friday was Megan Ingvoldstad, a forensic anthropologist at the laboratory, who said about 725 military, civilian, and contract workers are involved in the agency's effort to find and identify MIAs.
She said forensic teams are currently deployed to France, Germany, Italy, the Philippines, South Korea, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea in search of missing service members.
"The commitment of my colleagues doing this work is unconditional," Involdstad said.
So far this year, she said, the agency has identified 150 missing service members. That includes two Nebraskans: Sgt. White Goings, 22, of Auburn, Nebraska, who died in 1942 in a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines; and Pfc. Charles Vorel, 19, of Omaha, who was killed in July 1950 in the first days of the Korean War.
Goings was buried near his hometown in July, and Vorel will be buried at Omaha National Cemetery next month.
"It's a duty to honor families who have endured grief, uncertainty and loss, sometimes for generations," Ingvoldstad said.
Ron Haase said he and his wife became active in family support groups in the 1990s and spent several years urging Defense Department officials to investigate a tip turned in by a Vietnamese villager in 1985 about a crash site in the area where Don Grella's helicopter disappeared.
Eventually the site was found and excavated. The remains of the four crew members were returned, identified, and buried together at Arlington National Cemetery.
Ron Haase urged relatives of the missing to learn about what happened to their loved ones, and get to know other MIA families.
"Stay involved with your case, hug each other, cry together," he said. "Above all, never give up."
; twitter.com/Steve Liewer
