POW-MIA ceremony poignant

loading...

BANGOR – After the guardsmen had gone back to their duties Friday morning, the symbols used each year during National POW-MIA Recognition Day still occupied one corner of the gymnasium at the Bangor National Guard Base:

The small table representing the frailty of one prisoner alone against oppressors. A single red rose symbolizing family and loved ones, a slice of lemon as the bitter fate, salt for tears – and always, one empty chair tipped forward against the table, representing the service man or woman still missing or a prisoner.

More than 2,000 Americans still are unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Since World War I, the number of Americans missing is 90,000 – most of them from World War II.

“We remember those who have stood at arms for our sacrifice,” said Col. Don E. Reynolds, commander of the Maine Air National Guard’s 101st Air Refueling Wing.

“They are missing from our midst. They are commonly called POW-MIAs. We call them brothers,” he said during the solemn ceremony.

The recognition day is an annual event at the base in Bangor, but this year’s activities had an extra significance, held just days after terrorist attacks on the country killed more than an estimated 6,000 people, most of them civilians.

“I ask you to remember all those involved in those tragedies,” Reynolds said. “As our president said last night, I know you’re all prepared. We all are. This is going to be a long haul. Keep the faith – be vigilant. I know you will be.”

There is no question, Reynolds said after the ceremony, that the timing of Friday’s event “makes us look toward the future, makes people think what may be coming.”

The commander said he had spoken with guard officials in New Hampshire on Friday morning, and the word there was “they haven’t been mobilized yet.”

But typically, Reynolds said, there would be no “heads up” before the actual orders were given.

As in previous actions, Desert Storm among them, he explained, the 101st Air Refueling Wing might see some of its aircraft used in “air bridge” missions, escorting other planes overseas. Others could stay in Bangor, performing refueling and other duties from here.

Mainers may take more notice of aircraft coming into the base, he said. “There are three C-130s on the light-duty ramp right now.”

But so far, Reynolds said, the planes have been part of the 800 “transitional” aircraft that stop at the base each year, some of them staying overnight before going overseas.

Those visits are part of the Tanker Task Force mission that was transferred to the Bangor Air National Guard Base in 1994 when the Air Force left New Hampshire’s Pease as an Air Guard base.

Representing the congressional delegation during Friday’s ceremony were staffers Judy Cuddy for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, Chris Mann for U.S. Rep. John Baldacci, and Gail Kelley for U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Also participating was Chaplain, Capt. David Michaud of Passadumkeag, one of three chaplains in the wing.

“We pray that you would keep our country together, with a spirit of unity and the bond of peace,” Michaud prayed.

A member of the Guard for two years, Michaud said that his family, like that of other service personnel, is trying to prepare for the possibility that the unit will be called up.

“The waiting is the hard part, for the family,” he said. In his case, Passadumkeag Baptist Church also has to make plans in case their pastor is called to duty.

Guard members are looking forward, but not forgetting the thousands of service men and women still missing from earlier conflicts.

As Reynolds pointed out during the ceremony, the vase with the single red rose was adorned with a red ribbon, a sign that Americans still want “a proper accounting” for those who are missing.

That’s a hope still held by Master Sgt. Jan Thompson, a Bangor woman seeking answers to questions about a U.S. spy plane, a PB4Y2 shot down over the Baltic Sea on April 8, 1950.

One of the nine U.S. Navy personnel aboard was Thompson’s uncle Joseph H. Danens Jr., a motor machinist’s mate from Cut Bank, Mont. Thompson, a human resources officer for the Guard, was a small child the last time she saw her uncle.

“I remember him picking me up and carrying me. My grandmother never knew what happened. She couldn’t really talk about it without tearing up,” she said.

The presumption is that the Soviet Union shot down the plane, although Russian officials denied it. U.S. officials denied for several years that it was a spy plane before acknowledging that fact, Thompson said.

The woman has a notebook full of letters and other materials – she even wrote Premier Nikita Kruschev at one point.

There have been reports that a Russian trawler picked up some American fliers and that they were taken to a prison camp, but even the dissolution of the Soviet Union failed to bring the opportunity to find out what really happened to the nine aboard the plane.

“I want to know,” Thompson said quietly, but emphatically. “I’m willing to give my life for my country, and I’d want my country to find me.”

Today, a POW-MIA ceremony will be held during the membership supper of the Whitcomb-Baker Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4633 and Auxiliary at 6 p.m. on Canoe Club Road in Hampden.