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Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth)
July 8, 2006

POW's experience is his daughter's inspiration
By JOY DONOVAN, Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH --This is a story that sounds like a fairy tale. The elements are all there -- a man in uniform, a faithful friend, a beautiful princess, a villain and twists of fate.

But it's a true story. It is about the Hughes family of Magnolia, Ark.
One member of the family is Dawn Hughes. She is 21 and represents Texarkana in the Miss Texas Scholarship pageant, which ends tonight

But that's getting ahead of the story.
Once upon a time, James Hughes, an Iowa farm boy, enlisted in the Air Force, volunteered to pilot combat missions during the Vietnam War. On May 5, 1967, on his 56th mission, his plane was shot down, and he was taken prisoner.

Hughes was kept in the "Hanoi Hilton," as the prison came to be known, for almost six years. He spent three of those years in solitary confinement in a closet-size space with no light and no sound.

"Hell was better than the Hanoi Hilton," Hughes said this week.
His first cellmate after he was released from solitary was the late Vice Adm. James Stockdale, who ran for vice president in 1992.

Meanwhile, in Arkansas, a 14-year-old girl named Paula bought $2 bracelets for her sister and her that were engraved with the names of POWs in Vietnam. The sisters argued about who would wear the bracelet for Col. James Hughes because Hughes was the last name of family friends. Paula won, and vowed to pray for Hughes every day and not to remove the bracelet until he came home.

On March 4, 1973, Hughes was freed. Paula learned about it from the Shreveport newspaper.
"Oh, my God," she remembers thinking. "He really is alive."
She stayed up late into the night to watch TV, hoping to glimpse the man whose name she knew so well. The 5-foot, 10-inch man who came off the plane weighed 90 pounds.

Eventually Hughes, who received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, decided to personally thank everyone who wore bracelets with his name. Paula came home early from school one day just in time to receive a long-distance phone call from a voice she didn't recognize.

" 'This is Col. Hughes,' " Paula recalls hearing. "I bet my blood pressure dropped to my feet."
"She was nice to me," the retired military man remembers now.
Several letters and a photograph later, the colonel visited the teenager's family on Easter Sunday. Church, ham, biscuits and Southern hospitality made him welcome. Then came a $300 phone bill for one month's worth of calls.

The almost 16-year-old Paula married the 47-year-old colonel three months after she met him and after promising her father to finish high school. She did, and college, too.

That was more than 31 years ago. In the meantime, the war hero and his sweetheart came to have their own princess. The 21-year-old Dawn Hughes, whose pageant talent is dancing, is an honors student with a 4.0 grade point average at the University of Central Arkansas. Her personal platform issue is veterans appreciation.

Winning the Miss Texas title is now a family goal, but regardless of tonight's outcome, the Hughes family expects to live happily ever after.

Daily Oklahoman, The (KRT)
July 4, 2006

Fallen troops' sacrifice, legacy live on in memories
Ron Jackson

Capt. Samuel Alexander Woodworth may have had a premonition.
Before boarding an airplane for Vietnam, the Oklahoma fighter pilot turned to his wife, Nelle, and mentioned the acreage they purchased at Colorado Springs, Colo., to build their dream house.

"Get rid of it," Woodworth told his wife. "We won't need it."
Fellow U.S. pilots last saw Woodworth's F-105 Thunderbird crash into a hill April 17, 1965, after making a successful bombing run over enemy territory. The jet he flew burst into flames on impact, and there was no sign the 34-year-old pilot had ejected from his plane. His body never was recovered.

Today, 41 years after that fateful hour, Woodworth officially still is listed as missing in action. Yet his family has never doubted that he died in his cockpit.

"Looking back now, it seems so clear," said Patricia McKelvey, 78, Woodworth's older sister. "Nelle and I both believe he already knew he wasn't coming back."

Woodworth's sacrifice and legacy live on, as so many do this Independence Day through the memories of loved ones and comrades who survived the killing fields of war. Through them, their stories of courage and valor collectively define the price of freedom.

'Alex was determined to fly'Calvin Woodworth, Woodworth's younger brother, understands that price whenever he reflects on the scars of his past. News of his brother's death still rushes back to him with clarity in quiet moments.

Calvin was the first to receive the news at his hardware store in downtown Minco. Minutes later, he relayed the telegram to his father, Marvin.

Father and son carried the news to Woodworth's mother, Vermalois.
"I remember mother said, 'I'd rather have him die this way than to have him captured and tortured,'" recalled Calvin Woodworth, now 73. "Then my mother and father knelt by the sofa and prayed."

Woodworth wiped tears from his reddened eyes.
"I don't know what they said," he said, "but I imagine they thanked God for the time they had Alex."
And what a time it was.
Alex Woodworth rarely missed an opportunity to clown for a photograph or to playfully share his mischievous side. He could also dazzle with his rich, bass voice. But it was his love of the Lord and flying that truly defined the man he would become.

"As teenagers growing up during World War II, we both loved airplanes," Calvin said. "If an airplane ever flew over us we could stop and tell what make it was.

"Of course, Alex was determined to fly."
Alex Woodworth realized his dream after graduating from Oklahoma State University and being named a distinguished Air Force ROTC cadet.

Nelle and Alex were already raising a family by then. The couple had three children -- Marvin, then 9, Kathy, 7, and Alan, 5. Patricia McKelvey and Calvin Woodworth stay in close contact with their niece and nephews.

Alex remains close in their hearts.
"As the years have passed, I think about Alex every once in a while -- on special occasions such as his birthday, or the Fourth of July or whenever I talk to one of the kids," Calvin said. "He was just a good man. If he had a dollar, everyone had a dollar."

The Woodworth family often has been reminded of their loss through official government updates. Tidbits of information about the crash site have trickled in from abroad. In one correspondence, a villager told officials he buried an arm found at a crash site that corresponded with Woodworth's last known location.

A road reportedly now covers the burial spot.
"Mother always handled Alex's death very bravely," said McKelvey, whose mother and father since have died. "She was never bothered by the fact there was no body. She always said, 'It doesn't matter. I know where he is,' meaning he was in heaven with the Lord."

McKelvey has her own way of paying respects to her little brother.
"Every time I hear the Pledge of Allegiance or 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' I always have a tear come to my eyes," McKelvey said with a smile, "and I think of Alex."

Daytona News-Journal
July 4, 2006

A Soldier: NEVER FORGOTTEN On March 28, 1968, Sgt. George R. Brown, above, disappeared on a mission aimed at wire-tapping the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route. The Pentagon recently said it found his remains, but some suspect that the military is just trying to clear its books.

AUDREY PARENTE - STAFF WRITER

During the fury of the Vietnam War, three American special forces soldiers on a covert mission were left behind in the jungle to face enemy fire.

The rope escape ladder to their rescue helicopter had broken. The helicopter veered away from enemy flack as Viet Cong closed in around the men on the ground.

Declassified military records from the Vietnam War show that March 28, 1968, was the last time anyone saw Master Sgt. George Ronald Brown, Sgt. 1st Class Alan Boyer and Sgt. 1st Class Charles G. Huston alive.

Military officials have identified a tooth belonging to Brown, but questions linger regarding whether it is truly his.
One Holly Hill man who still wonders about Brown's fate has worn an MIA/POW bracelet bearing his name for more than 10 years. Mark Barker, a police commander with the Holly Hill Police Department, became fascinated with the incident after receiving the bracelet in return for a donation to a family support organization. He began studying military records and even contacted the missing soldier's oldest daughter, Ronda Brown-Pitts.

Recently, Barker learned from the Pentagon that the military's plan was to inter remains identified as Browns' this month at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Instead, the remains will be delivered to the daughter in Dayton, Texas.

Brown-Pitts, who was 6 when her father went missing, believes her father deserves every honor, but declined the Arlington burial. She wants to know what really happened to her father in the jungles of Laos and questions the validity of his "remains."

The military gave her $4,800 to buy a burial vault, and she will receive a full-sized casket containing the tooth.
Retired Col. Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office says the tooth "compares to a radiograph of his - that is a dental X-ray," and "that is as close as a fingerprint."

But Brown-Pitts says dental records provided to her don't match because her father's tooth had a filling, and the tooth recovered did not.

"When I questioned them further on this, they claimed that many of his dental records were lost," she says. "Although I demanded a DNA test it was refused on the basis that it would desecrate the body."

The military official says testing the tooth would violate military policy of "not doing destructive testing on the remains if that would destroy all the remains." And a spokesman from a DNA lab testing facility backs the military's policy, saying a test would require breaking the tooth, with "only a small chance" of obtaining conclusive evidence. The test's cost would be about $1,000, says Steve Smith from Gene Tree, based in Salt Lake City.

Barker says military research suggests a rescue team sent in three days after the incident may have been dropped in the wrong place. But no search for Brown and the others - who were ordered to plant wiretaps along the Ho Chi Minh Trail several miles from Tchepone, Laos - began until years later.

Nearly a decade after the battle, Brown was officially declared "presumed dead."
A memorial for Brown then took place in Holly Hill, because that's where his mother - Mamie Nell Brasier - lived. She has since died. Brown's daughter, then a teenager, attended the service but never returned to the Daytona Beach area. An empty grave for Brown still exists at Daytona Memorial Park on Bellevue Avenue.

Official searches for the missing men did not come until 1992, when a joint U.S.-Laos team began interviewing villagers, Barker says.

"In May 1993, another joint team went out and excavated the site but no human remains or material evidence was found," Barker says. Additional inquiries and excavations were conducted in other locations in 1996, turning up nothing.

But in 1999 a metal insert from a soldier's combat boot was discovered at one location, believed to be near the area the three men were last seen.

"In January 2000, another team excavated," he says. "They did find a tooth and several artifacts." In March 2000, more artifacts were uncovered, but no human remains. None of the artifacts was related to Brown.

Then in December 2001, the tooth was identified as Brown's, and in May 2003 the Army notified Brown-Pitts about finding her father's remains.

She says aerial photos of the scene from the time of the battle, provided her by the military, offered no evidence of recently dug graves, bodies or blood.

"It was as if they were marched off the scene," she says.
A special operations soldier - Curtis Marcum of Oneida, Tenn., a retired first sergeant and 23-year Army veteran who served with Brown - also doubts the tooth belonged to Brown.

"It's pretty well known that they weren't killed on the spot, but taken away from there, because if they had been there, there would have been more than a tooth," Marcum says. "The feeling of most of us is that they are using this tooth to clear the books."

The Pentagon, meanwhile, maintains open cases on the other two men, believed to have perished that day in 1968 in the Laos jungle.

Itar-Tass
July 7, 2006

Japanese group arrives in Primorye to look for POW burial places
By Marina Shatilova

VLADIVOSTOK, July 7 (Itar-Tass) -- A delegation from the Japanese Health Ministry arrived in the city of Arsenyev, the Primorsky Territory, on Friday to look for places of burial of Japanese prisoners of war who died in Soviet camps after the end of World War II.

There were three camps for Japanese prisoners in the region -- in Arsenyev, the settlement of Izyubriny and in the area of a separate working unit.

The Primorsky Territory is one of the Soviet Union's 30 regions where there were camps, in which about 75,000 Japanese were held. More than 6,700 of them died in Primorye due to various causes and were buried there.

Over the period since 1992, remains of prisoners were taken from 36 burial places. Remains of 1,578 people were carried out. The identities of three were established. All the remains of Japanese prisoners were taken from the cemetery in Nakhodka, where a memorial will be erected.

Sincerely,

Jay Veith

Phone: 302-832-7535
Cell: 302-312-6886
Fax: 866-490-2752
jay.veith@thomson.com

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