THE WALL OF FACES

It is said a man hasn't died as long as he is remembered. This prayer is a way for families, friends and fellow veterans to remember our fallen brothers and sisters. Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning hush, I am the swift, uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight, I am the stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there, I did not die.

REMAINS OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE OFFICER

FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA RETURNED AND IDENTIFIED


On August 2, 1967,

CAPTAIN
CAREY ALLEN CUNNINGHAM

and his crewmember,

COLONEL
WALLACE GOURLEY HYNDS JR

were flying a daylight reconnaissance

mission over North Vietnam.

Their wingman stated that the first

aircraft banked into a hard right turn

and exploded up crashing to the ground.

No parachutes were seen exiting

their RF-4C 'PHANTOM'

fighter / bomber.

In 1989, the government of Vietnam

repatriated two boxes of remains,

one of which they claimed to be the

remains of one of the two pilots.

In 1992 and 1994, a joint

United States / Vietnam team

interviewed villagers about a

1967 crash of an American aircraft

in which both pilots died. These

villagers reported that the remains

of the two pilots were turned over

to central authorities.

Personal effects belonging to these

Americans were examined in two

Vietnam military museums.

Later the remains repatriated in

1989 were subsequently

identified as those of

CAPTAIN
CAREY ALLEN CUNNINGHAM


COLONEL
WALLACE GOURLEY HYNDS JR

remains unaccounted for to this day.


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


AIRMAN'S REMAINS FINALLY COME HOME
by
MALCOLM RITTER
The Associated Press

Collinsville, Alabama (AP)- May 25, 1998


The day he died on the other side of the world,
Captain Carey Allen Cunningham began a journey
that lasted longer than his life. Last month,
beneath two oak trees on a hill overlooking his
hometown, the journey came to an end.

Dozens of family members gathered under a blue
canvass canopy that flapped in the breeze. A
minister offered thanks for Carey's life, "for what
he did for us, individually and as a country." In the
distance, a bugler in a crisp blue uniform and white
gloves played "Taps".

Thus were Carey's only known remains
- 16 scraps of bone in a small wooden box - laid to rest.

The headstone said,

HOME AT LAST

It had been nearly 31 years since Carey, an Air Force
pilot and navigator died at 29 in a plane crash in North
Vietnam. His remains were identified only this year.

Carey's case is striking but hardly unique. Last year,
the military identified the remains of 35 Americans
who had been missing in the Vietnam War. And while
the national spotlight is on the Vietnam casualty in
the Tomb of the Unknowns, if you want to know what
these investigations really do listen to some of the
mourners who gathered last month at the Cunningham
family plot.

Listen to Carey's daughter, Anna Munoz, 33. She finally
had to bury her childhood hope that the Dad she'd last
seen when she was 3 would return.

Listen to his son, Carl, 32, and brothers Wayne and Herbert,
who could finally shed doubts about what they'd been told
of Carey's fate.

And listen to his sister, Joanne Gunnin, 67, who helped make
this day happen by getting her doctor to draw some of her
blood and by driving the sample to Atlanta herself. She is
just glad the family could finally give her younger brother a
funeral.

Joanne now lives in the home where Carey grew up, as a
music-loving bookworm who was absolutely nuts about
airplanes.

When Carey was in college, he and Wayne would buzz
Collinsville in Wayne's J-3 Piper Cub, whizzing by their
parent's farm house only 50 feet off the ground.

"It was quite the talk in the town," Joanne recalls. "When
a plane would fly over low, they would always say,
'That's the Cunningham boys.'"

Carey joined the Air Force in 1959 and married in 1963.
He and his wife, Christina, had two children.

Carey went to Vietnam in June 1967.

One August day in 1967, Wayne was coming home from
work in Marietta, Georgia, when he heard on the radio
that an American plane had been lost over North Vietnam.
"It just shook me," Wayne said. "It was my brother. I just
knew it."

Joanne, who was living in Birmingham, Alabama, had
heard the same news and had the same reaction.

Before long, two men in uniform came to meet her parents.

Carey had been the navigator of a two-man reconnaissance
plane, they said. Other airmen in nearby planes had seen
it go down, but they didn't see any parachutes. Carey
almost certainly died in the explosion. No remains had been
recovered.

His mother later said he died doing what he loved best.

The Air Force had a memorial service for him at his base
in Idaho. Later his name was included in the Vietnam
Memorial in Washington, DC.

But for some members of the Cunningham family, the
story wasn't quite over. Wayne, his old flying buddy,
suspected Carey might still be alive. After a few years,
though, he began hoping Carey was dead, afraid of
what the North Vietnamese would do to him if he were
captured.

Carl was also nagged by the possibility his father might
have survived the crash and become a prisoner.

Anna with only the dimmest memories of her father, never
quite gave up hope he'd come back.

That's where it stood, for decades, until Joanne opened
a letter from the military one day in 1996. Bones had
been recovered from Vietnam that might be her brother's,
it said. Could she give some blood to see if the DNA matches ?

The pathway to that startling request had begun in 1989,
when the Vietnam government turned over 28 boxes of
remains to the United States. Two boxes had come from
the village of Son Giang, near where Carey had crashed.

Over the next few years, joint American-Vietnames inspection
teams gathered threads of evidence. They found military
identification cards for Carey and his pilot at a Vietnamese
museum, and documents in Hanoi that said both men had
died in the crash. Villagers near the crash scene told them
that partial remains had been buried in a common grave,
dug up, separated and reburied. Then they were exhumed
again, probably in 1977 or 1978.

A sample of foot bone from one box had failed to yield any
mitochondrial DNA for analysis in1991. It was one of the
first attempts by the military's lab in Rockville, Maryland,
to use "mtDNA" for identification. In 1995, another piece
of the same bone did show "mtDNA".

It was time to ask for Joanne's blood. If details matched
the genetic material in the foot bone, it would be strong
evidence for identifying the remains as Carey's.

For Wayne, the letter asking for blood was enough.

His brother was dead.

For Anna, it began a long period of waiting and calling
the military repeatedly for news. Finally, last February,
an Air Force representative visited her home in Phoenix.
The "mtDNA" from Joanne's blood matched not only the
genetic material from the foot bone, but also material
from leg and head bones in the other box.

Both boxes held remains of her brother.

That was proof enough for Anna. And for Carl, who was
relieved his father hadn't been captured. And for Herbert.
While Herbert had given his younger brother up for dead
in 1967, "You still say, maybe a miracle will happen...
But once the bones are identified, you say it's all over
with for sure."

Anna was happy the wait was over. But she was saddened.

"I'd never allowed myself to mourn the loss of having a
father," she says. "I realize that if he'd been around I would
be different."

She also had something else to grieve. "Since I was very
little, I had a hope he would come back. In a way, I'm
mourning my hope. I don't know whether to call it a good
feeling, but it feels right to know now what happened."

On April 25, Carey's bones completed their journey. They
would no longer be buried and dug up again in the North
Vietnam countryside, or stored in laboratories in the hope
of finding a better place.

Now they're in that better place. From Carey's grave, you
can see the high school where he pounded out Chopin's
"Military" polonaise at graduation, the swatch of sky he
and Wayne sliced as they buzzed the swimming hole and
their parents' chicken house, the road into town he took
with his brothers and sisters to catch the Saturday
afternoon Superman serials.

HOME AT LAST

For his children, this final resting place is a touchstone
to a father they never really knew. Carl, who lives in
Sweden, says if he has children he will bring them here
and tell them about their grandfather.

Anna will be back, too.

"I'll just talk to him there," she says. "He probably won't
even hear me, but that's what graves are for...for people
left behind.

COLONEL
WALLACE GOURLEY HYNDS JR

was the pilot, and

CAPTAIN
CAREY ALLEN CUNNINGHAM

the radio operator / navigator

of a reconnaissance version of the

RF-4C 'PHANTOM'

fighter / bomber

on August 2, 1967

in a flight of two aircraft on a daylight

reconnaissance mission near the city of

Vinh, in North Vietnam.

Their wingman stated that the aircraft

banked into a hard right turn and

exploded upon crashing into the ground.

No parachutes were seen in the sky and

no emergency beeper signals were heard.

Based on these visual observations the

two pilots were declared as killed in action.

They are listed as being missing in action

because their bodies were never recovered.

Colonel Hynds and Captain Cunningham

were serving with the

10th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron



YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN
NOR SHALL YOU EVER BE



please see the story of

COLONEL
WALLACE GOURLEY HYNDS JR