Portland service recalls pilot

SOUTH PORTLAND – A memorial Mass for an Air Force co-pilot whose bomber crashed over Laos during the Vietnam War provided a bittersweet ending Friday to his widow’s decades-long search for answers about the fate of the man who remains the love of her life.

Surrounded by family and friends at a reception following the service at St. Patrick’s Church in Portland, Teresa Getchell was pleased that remains of Lt. Col. Paul Getchell were identified at the remote crash site but sad that their time together had to be so short.

“It was a long wait, 38 years, for this to bring closure,” said Teresa, who has worn her wedding band throughout that time. “But he was worth every minute of it.”

Teresa said her hopes that Paul might somehow have survived in the rugged jungle near the Laos-Vietnam border dimmed in 1979 when the military changed his status from presumptive finding of death to killed in action.

“I felt then that he wouldn’t be coming home alive, but we still hoped to be able to get some final resolution,” she said.

Teresa was notified in December that bone fragments found at the site where his B-57 was apparently shot down by enemy fire while on a night bombing mission on Jan. 13, 1969, were identified through family DNA as those of her husband. Last month, she flew to Hawaii to meet with the anthropologist who supervised the search and observe the placement of the tiny fragments in a casket.

Teresa accompanied the casket to Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, where her husband was buried with full military honors. The graveside ceremony was attended by the couple’s two children, Greg and Karen.

The bone fragments, along with Paul’s dog tags, were discovered during the course of six excavations of the crash site between 2003 and 2005. The remains of the plane’s pilot, Col. Norman Dale Eaton of Weatherford, Okla., were identified at the same time as Getchell’s.

Paul’s sister, Mary Buttermore of Taunton, Mass., accompanied Teresa to Hawaii and said they were awed by the respectful manner in which the military processed the remains, conducted the ceremony and interacted with the survivors.

Recalling shabby treatment accorded veterans returning from Vietnam, Buttermore said, “This time they’re making up for some of that.”

Gov. John Baldacci and Maj. Gen. Bill Libby, commander of the Maine National Guard, attended the memorial Mass, and the governor ordered flags throughout the state lowered to half-staff. The Rev. James Knox, who was in charge of the Roman Catholic summer camp where Getchell’s interest in his wife-to-be took root, delivered the homily.

The two had met years earlier while attending the same parochial school in Portland. They renewed their acquaintance at Camp Gregory in Gray, where Teresa worked as a nurse and Paul as a handyman.

Paul, who was 32 when he disappeared, would be 70 today. After his tour in Vietnam, he was scheduled for a teaching assignment at the Air Force Academy.

Greg and Karen were 3 and 4, respectively, when their father left for the war and their memories of him consist largely of “vague recollections and brief glimpses,” Greg said.

But Greg still recalls images of his father shaving and himself standing alongside mimicking the routine. He also remembers his dad building a pen to house the litter of black Lab puppies that became part of the family household.

Friends described Paul and Teresa as a devout couple who loved each other deeply.

“In all those years, she hasn’t taken her wedding band off,” said Pat Fahey. “They had a beautiful relationship.”