BARRY F FIVELSON
VIEW ALL PHOTOS (2)
HONORED ON PANEL 5W, LINE 106 OF THE WALL

BARRY FRANK FIVELSON

WALL NAME

BARRY F FIVELSON

PANEL / LINE

5W/106

DATE OF BIRTH

03/19/1950

CASUALTY PROVINCE

LZ

DATE OF CASUALTY

02/15/1971

HOME OF RECORD

EVANSTON

COUNTY OF RECORD

Cook County

STATE

IL

BRANCH OF SERVICE

ARMY

RANK

WO

Book a time
Contact Details
ASSOCIATED ITEMS LEFT AT THE WALL

REMEMBRANCES

LEFT FOR BARRY FRANK FIVELSON
POSTED ON 7.15.2015

Final Mission of WO Barry F. Fivelson

Lam Son 719 was a large-scale offensive against enemy communications lines which was conducted in that part of Laos adjacent to the two northern provinces of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese would provide and command ground forces, while U.S. forces would furnish airlift and supporting fire. Phase I, renamed Operation Dewey Canyon II, involved an armored attack by the U.S. from Vandegrift base camp toward Khe Sanh, while the ARVN moved into position for the attack across the Laotian border. Phase II began with an ARVN helicopter assault and armored brigade thrust along Route 9 into Laos. ARVN ground troops were transported by American helicopters, while U.S. Air Force provided cover strikes around the landing zones. On February 15, 1971, during one of these maneuvers, a CH-47 helicopter was assigned the task of ferrying a load of gasoline into Savannakhet Province, Laos. The crew of the aircraft consisted of crew chief SP4 Donald E. Crone, pilot CWO Marvin M. Leonard, door gunner SP4 Willis C. Crear, flight engineer SP4 John L. Powers, and aircraft commander 2LT James H. Taylor. WO Barry F. Fivelson was a passenger onboard the aircraft. During the mission, the aircraft was hit by enemy fire and began to lose altitude. During the descent, the sling load apparently exploded, causing the helicopter to explode, break into pieces, and crash. Observers later said that the helicopter seemed disoriented and that it had overflown the nearest friendly location by several miles and had descended in enemy-held territory about 10 miles southeast of Sepone. According to the U.S. Army, air searches conducted within minutes of the crash revealed no sign of survivors. However, according to information given to family members, the aerial search failed to find evidence of a crash. A ground search was not possible because of hostile threat in the area. (Note also that Defense Department data remarks indicates that a crash site was found and that no survivors were observed from the air.) The men aboard the CH-47 were all classified Killed/Body Not Recovered. In October 2001 it was announced that a February 11, 2000 joint recovery in Laos resulted in the positive identification of the remains of four Americans: WO1 Barry F. Fivelson, Specialists 4th Class Willis C. Crear and Donald E. Crone, and John L. Powers. [Taken from pownetwork.org]
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POSTED ON 12.19.2013
POSTED BY: Curt Carter [email protected]

Remembering An American Hero

Dear WO Barry Frank Fivelson, sir

As an American, I would like to thank you for your service and for your sacrifice made on behalf of our wonderful country. The youth of today could gain much by learning of heroes such as yourself, men and women whose courage and heart can never be questioned.

May God allow you to read this, and may He allow me to someday shake your hand when I get to Heaven to personally thank you. May he also allow my father to find you and shake your hand now to say thank you; for America, and for those who love you.

With respect, and the best salute a civilian can muster for you, Sir

Curt Carter
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POSTED ON 9.21.2010

Remembering You

Just thinking of you
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POSTED ON 10.29.2004
POSTED BY: Robert Sage

We Remember

Barry is buried at Arlington Nat Cem.
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POSTED ON 3.7.2002
POSTED BY: Michael Robert Patterson

In Honored Remembrance Of CWO Fivelson

A funeral, At Last
Orange County relatives find little consolation at graveside.
March 2, 2002

Arlington, Virginia -- Donald Crone's parents went to their graves
believing their son would return alive from the Vietnam War.

They hired psychics. They saw him in dreams standing in a rice field.
They discussed the chance he got married and raised a family there.

Other relatives grimly accepted the U.S. Army's official view that Crone,
21, was killed when a helicopter he was flying in exploded over Laos.

Accepting his death or not, a brother and three sisters from Orange
County, California, stood beside a chilly grave at Arlington National
Cemetery on Friday, watching as Crone was buried in a common crypt
with three others who disappeared February 15, 1971. Thirty-one years
after war had claimed Specialist 4 Donald Crone, he finally got a funeral.

"The only reason I'm here ... is my brother volunteered. He was fighting
for his country," Fullerton resident Arlene Teske said. "I'm here to honor
my brother and his fellow crew members."

Crone's Orange County family members shared one pew inside the Old
Post Chapel, a colonial-style red-brick building, for the Protestant
memorial service. With a reading from the 121st Psalm and the singing of
Isaac Watts' classic hymn "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," the service
brought a sense of finality to the lives of six men who never came home.

A horse-drawn caisson led a procession from the chapel to the
gravesite, followed by members of the U.S. Army Band and a platoon
from the ceremonial "Old Guard" unit.

A seven-member firing party shot three volleys into the air, then a bugler
played Taps.

Finally, a single, flag-draped casket bearing the "commingled remains" of
Crone and three others - Warrant Officer Barry Fivelson and Specialist 4
Willis Crear and John Powers - was lowered into one grave. A solitary
granite headstone bore their names, along with those of their two
still-missing pilots, Lieutenant James Taylor and Warrant Officer Marvin
Leonard.

Family members said the casket is nearly empty. Crone's Army dress
uniform and at least one other are in there, along with six,
fingernail-sized bone fragments recovered two years ago from a field in
rural Laos.

"It's more symbolic than it is realism," said Crone's younger brother,
David, 49, of La Habra. "(But) I think overall, it's probably a good thing.
The government needs closure. It needs to put this to rest."

Parents became activists in MIA cause

Crone wasn't supposed to be aboard that ill-fated CH-47 Chinook flying
fuel across the Vietnamese border to an outpost in Laos, relatives said.
But when a friend got sick, he volunteered to fill in as crew chief. A fuel
tank was loaded onto a sling beneath the twin-rotor helicopter.
Somewhere over Laos' Xepon District, Army documents say, the Chinook
strayed into enemy territory, then exploded, possibly from enemy fire,
records state.

Two sections of the helicopter flew in different directions.

"Enemy activity in the area of the crash precluded a ground search," an
Army report said. "However, an aerial search was launched a few
minutes after the crash. ... No survivors were seen."

The disappearance of Crone, a twin and the oldest of seven children
from Whittier, hit his close-knit family hard, David Crone said. Clean-cut,
fresh-faced and patriotic, Donald Crone enlisted right after high school
and had gotten engaged to a local girl just before shipping out to
Vietnam in July 1970.

"It's been tough never knowing really the outcome," David Crone said.
"My parents never accepted the fact that Donald was dead."

Crone's parents soon became activists in the POW-MIA cause, attending
demonstrations outside city halls, recruiter stations and congressional
offices.

"They loaded all the kids in the cars with picket signs because they
wanted accountability," David Crone said. Teske, Crone's sister from
Fullerton, shared her parents' reluctance to accept his death.

Friday's burial "might be the end of a chapter, but it's not the end of the
book. They didn't bring Don home," Teske said. "That would be closure
for me."

Evidence of crash site first found in 1996. The Army has spent 13 years
searching for Crone's Chinook, one of hundreds of such missions since
the war's end. The Army claims to have discovered the remains of 640
U.S. service members listed as unaccounted for. About 1,940 others are
still missing. Three expeditions to southwest Laos from 1988 to 1994
failed to find any sign of Crone's crew, hampered in part by monsoons
that apparently flooded a crash site, Army records and family members
said.

In 1996, however, searchers found a site strewn with bits of Plexiglas,
metal, a Chinook data plate and the piece of a boot sole, records show.
Army officials told family members that they had to send Laotian workers
ahead to clear dense vegetation from search sites. One area had to be
abandoned because it was infested with poisonous snakes, relatives
said.

Teams returning in 1998 and 1999 found a personal effect and data
plates tied to Crone's mission, records show. Then, in early 2000, a joint
U.S.-Laotian search team found a second crash - the spot where the
helicopter's aft section fell, along with Crone, Crear, Powers and
Fivelson. The second site, about two miles from the first, yielded human
remains, crew-related artifacts and personal effects - including Crone's
dog tags. In November, officials informed Crone's relatives that the
Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii had tied the human
remains to crew members in Crone's aft section, although it's unclear to
whom or how.

Family members say they were told the bone fragments were so badly
burned, DNA testing couldn't be done. Since no remains were recovered
from the site where the pilots were believed to have crashed, Taylor and
Leonard remain missing, officials said. As far as the Crones are
concerned, Donald Crone remains missing too.

"I have very little faith that anything in that coffin belongs to my brother
- other than that uniform that I put in there," David Crone said.

Still, they were impressed at that "the Army's (providing) all the bells and
whistles and full military honors 31 years later," Teske said.

"It's kind of bizarre. I don't understand it," David Crone added. "But if I
get a chance to honor my brother and get a little closure, I'll do it.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.com/bffivelson.htm
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