RICHARD M MANCINI
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HONORED ON PANEL 34E, LINE 30 OF THE WALL

RICHARD MICHAEL MANCINI

WALL NAME

RICHARD M MANCINI

PANEL / LINE

34E/30

DATE OF BIRTH

02/17/1937

CASUALTY PROVINCE

LZ

DATE OF CASUALTY

01/11/1968

HOME OF RECORD

AMSTERDAM

COUNTY OF RECORD

Montgomery County

STATE

NY

BRANCH OF SERVICE

NAVY

RANK

AE2

Book a time
Contact Details
ASSOCIATED ITEMS LEFT AT THE WALL

REMEMBRANCES

LEFT FOR RICHARD MICHAEL MANCINI
POSTED ON 6.11.2003
POSTED BY: Fred Turner

Thoughts on Richard Mancini

I have been wearing Richard Mancini's bracelet ever since a veteran by the name of Bucky Hayes gave it to me six years ago after I finished my freshman year of college. It has served as a constant source of remembrance for all those who lost their lives during the Vietnam War, and, indeed, for all the soldiers who have died or been captured protecting our country.

I never knew Mr. Mancini, but I always wondered what happened on January 11, 1968. I was stunned to read in the newspaper that his body, along with those of the other crew members not already recovered, was being brought home from Laos. I know that it must be a difficult time for his family and friends, and I only hope that his recovery brings them some sense of closure. I would like them to know that I have been wearing Mr. Mancini's bracelet and that I would be honored if they would like me to pass it along to them as part of their remembrance.

Reading about Mr. Mancini's story has been fascinating and heartrending and I plan to make a trip to Arlington National Cemetery to visit his grave.
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POSTED ON 5.27.2003
POSTED BY: Michael Robert Patterson

In Honored Remembrance of CPO Mancini

United States Department of Defense
Number 370-03
IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 27, 2003
MISSING NAVY CREWMEMBERS FOUND AND IDENTIFIED

The remains of nine U.S. Navy crewmembers, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and their remains are being returned to their families for burial.

The nine are identified as Commander Delbert A. Olson, Casselton, North Dakota; Lieutenants (jg) Denis L. Anderson, Hope, Kansas; Arthur C. Buck, Sandusky, Ohio; and Philip P. Stevens, Twin Lake, Michigan; Petty Officers Second Class
Richard M. Mancini, Amsterdam, New York; Michael L. Roberts, Purvis, Mississippi, Donald N. Thoresen and Kenneth H. Widon, Detroit, Michigan; and Petty Officer Third Class Gale R. Siow, Huntington Park, California.

A group burial will be held at Arlington National Cemetery on June 18, 2003.

The nine departed Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base on January 11, 1968 onboard a Navy OP-2E Neptune aircraft for a mission over Laos to drop sensors which detected enemy movements. During its last radio contact, the crew reported
they were descending through dense clouds. When they did not return to their home base, a search was initiated but found no evidence of a crash. Two weeks later, an Air Force aircrew photographed what appeared to be the crash site, but enemy
activity in the area prevented a recovery operation.

Between 1993 and 2002, six U.S.-Lao investigation teams led by the Joint Task Force Full Accounting interviewed villagers in the surrounding area, gathered aircraft debris and surveyed the purported crash site scattered on two ledges of Phou Louang Mountain in Khammouan Province. During a 1996 visit, team members also recovered identification cards for several crewmembers, as well as human remains.

Full-scale recovery missions by the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii (CILHI) in both 2001 and 2002 yielded additional remains, as well as identification of other crewmembers. More than 1,900 Americans are missing in
action from the Vietnam War, with another 86,000 MIA from the Cold War, the Korean War and WWII.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/aircrew-01181968.htm
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POSTED ON 5.11.2003
POSTED BY: Michael Robert Patterson

In Honored Remembrance of Richard Michael Mancini

Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Courtesy of the Gloversville, New York, Leader Herald

Homeward Bound: Mayfield man retrieving remains of father killed in Vietnam War

MAYFIELD, New York - Navy 2nd Class Petty Officer Richard Michael Mancini is coming home.

His son - Richard J. Mancini of Progress Road - is traveling to Hawaii Monday to bring back the remains of a father he never knew in life, but certainly in spirit. The
elder Mancini, an aviation electrician, was killed 35 years ago when the plane he, eight others and a dog, Snoopy, were in crashed into a mountain in Laos during the Vietnam War.

The remains of all were found in 1996, and for the younger Mancini, now 36, the logistical adventure of recovery and having his dad properly laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia is nearly over.

"It ended up most of my life that I didn't miss something I really had," Mancini says now.

He said he realizes that everybody in the extended Mancini family - including his 66-year-old mother, Rosemarie, who lives in a Fultonville nursing home - lost something when his father died.

Mancini and his wife, Nancy, have an 18-month-old son, Niko, who is about the same age he was when his father met his untimely fate.

"I was too young to remember, but now I feel having my own son, I have somewhat of a connection," says Mancini.

It was not a case of enemy fire on January 11, 1968, when Richard M. Mancini, his fellow crew members and their trusted canine perished in their Neptune OP-2E. Their unit was out of the Navy's VO-67 Squadron, which was dropping modified accouebouys to detect the Viet Cong in Laos.

The OP-2E was flying an American Top Secret acoustic and seismic reconnaissance mission along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to sniff out troop and munitions movements by the North Vietnamese. When they would find something, they would call in air strikes. But on the day of the mission January 11, things went terribly wrong.

"They were flying and dropping sensors into the treetops," Mancini said.

His father, at the time a 30-year-old airman from Amsterdam, was flying along with these other volunteer squadron members: pilot and Commander Delbert A. Olson,
Lieutenant (jg) Denis L. Anderson, Lieutenant (jg) Arthur C. Buck, Lieutenant (jg) Philip P. Stevens, AO2 Michael L. Roberts, ADJ2 Donald N. Thoresen, PH2 Kenneth H. Widon and ATN3 Gale R. Siow. All their remains, including Snoopy's, were later found.

The plane was over the Boualapha District, Khammouan Province. It was a type of aircraft that had served in the Vietnam War from 1967-68. Eventually, the squadron would be disbanded, and men rotated back to the states.

But as Mancini tells the story, on January 11, his father's OP-2E ran into some difficult environmental conditions.

President Lyndon Johnson was counting on the mission to detect the movement of North Vietnamese forces into South Vietnam.

The first pass by Mancini's plane was too high, but sensors were dropped.

In the mountainous area, the pilot tried to pull up, but heavy cloud cover contributed to the plane's crash.

Government documents obtained by the younger Mancini said the plane wound up "burning and sliding" into a mountain.

The plane wreckage was spread over four ledges and the crew's remains had to withstand 35 years of monsoons and overgrowth.

Mancini said he learned later his mother, Rosemarie, was devastated by her husband's death. But he said the mission ended up saving many lives during that period of the protracted Vietnam conflict. The Navy man's status went from missing in action to killed in action within 90 days.

Later, the crash would be deemed an accident.

Mancini grew up in Gloversville, New York, and he said he tried to learn what happened to his father, basically only knowing that he died in a plane crash during the war. The federal government has a Joint Task Force Full Accounting arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.

After the remains were found in 1996, the site was closed for awhile, but the 35- to 90-member JTFFA crews went back four times. Mancini said the task force never came up with conclusive proof that his dad's crew was killed by anti-aircraft fire.

"They were a crew of dedicated men attempting to carry out a mission," Mancini said.

Commander Donald McKnight of the Navy Marine Reserve office in Albany has been serving as a liaison to the rest of the military for Mancini and his family.

As a casualty assistance call officer, he said he is glad to assist.

"This is a big deal for the Navy," McKnight said. "I told Rich this is certainly an honor for me to help take care of a shipmate, even though it was from the 1960s."

Mancini's father was a 1955 graduate of Amsterdam High School and later went into the Navy. The younger Mancini said his mother gave birth to him in Washington state. After the crash, Mancini said his mother was notified but was having trouble accepting it.

"My mom didn't want to believe my father was killed," Mancini said.

Mrs. Mancini would watch TV accounts of troops coming home from Vietnam, hoping her husband would step off a plane.

Meanwhile, Rich Mancini said, life went on as a kid in Gloversville.

"I didn't miss out on the things that normal children do," he said. Mancini said he played football and baseball. Instead of his dad being there, his grandfather, the late John Sweeney, often was.

Seven years ago, when Mancini was contacted by the federal government that there was an opportunity to excavate his dad's crash site, the government said it needed DNA samples. Blood samples were taken from the deceased Navy man's mother, Ann, and his brother, Michael, who were living in Amsterdam at the time.

"We hurried up and waited," Mancini said.

Permission for much of the work by the JTFFA had to be secured from three local governments - Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The excavation crews were only allowed to work on certain days. Needless to say, it was not an immediate
identification of the deceased sailors.

As of 2001, the JTFFA has been involved in 3,405 cases and 590 excavations in Southeast Asia. About 2,000 Vietnam War troops remained unaccounted for as of 2001.

Finally, positive identification of Richard Mancini's remains, including a femur, was made. On March 7, 2003, the government presented Mancini and his mother with a 400-page case file on the Navy man's death.

Ironically, the family later found out that one of the JTFFA men involved in the dogged fight to recover the remains - David Runkin or Arizona - is related to Nancy Mancini.

Richard Mancini said he continued to press for information and wrote e-mails to get more data. Asked if the military handled the situation well in Vietnam, he doesn't
hesitate.

"I believe they did the best they could with what they worked with," he said. Since the administration of former President Ronald Reagan, and the ending of the Cold War in the 1980s, he feels America has committed itself to bringing men home from Vietnam. But he said the search is tough, and often too tough and dangerous for recovery crews to go back in.

For example, Mancini said 13 men, including seven Americans, were killed in a recovery mission in Vietnam in April 2001.

Mancini said he has met co-pilot Anderson's wife and pilot Olson's son.

Every year, he said the JTFFA holds briefings and conferences in Washington, D.C., which he has attended.

He hopes to attend the services of three other men killed in his father's plane. But now, it's time to bring his father home. His wife, Nancy, will be staying in Gloversville with their son while her husband goes to Hawaii for his dad.

"It's quite overwhelming to a lot of the senses," Nancy Mancini said.

Because of the connection between her husband and their son, and how young her husband was when his father died, she said, "It kind of strikes home with me."

But Nancy Mancini says there is some closure to this life experience on the horizon.

Richard Mancini will be taking time off from his job as associate director of Bethesda House in Schenectady. He will be spending about four to five days at Hickam Air Force Base's Central Identification Lab in Hawaii before returning May 16, 2003.

"I will be allowed to view his remains," he said. "I really don't have any preconceived thoughts and emotions."

The remains will be flown from Hawaii to Albany accompanied by an honor guard, Mancini said.

A viewing will take place at an Amsterdam funeral home May 18, 2003, with a service the next day.

The Navy airman's interment will be May 20, 2003, in Arlington National Cemetery, the choice of the family, with several Mancini family members present.

"That was my mother's decision," Mancini said. "She, in essence, felt it was an honor for him being buried there."

Even though his mother is ill, she will be attending. A decision has already been made to have Rosemarie, who never remarried, buried along side her husband.

"She's nervous about flying," Mancini said. "She's excited about finally being a step closer to closure."

During his life, Mancini thought about joining the military, but said he didn't want to put his mother through that. He wonders if that was ever meant to be.

He characterizes the journey to find out more about his dad - and then actually finding his father - as "incredibly interesting to me." He said he would normally be fascinated with such a story if it was on the Discovery Channel, but "to live through it is an entirely different dimension."

All along, he said he felt something was missing in his life.

His father, Mancini said, is "certainly" a war hero.

He said he has gained new insight into the experiences of service personnel through recent coverage of the war in Iraq.

"My belief in our military personnel is that they have enriched a sense of duty and commitment, honor and courage," Mancini said.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.com/rmmancini.htm
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POSTED ON 1.24.2003
POSTED BY: Betty P.

I TOO, WEAR HIS NAME

I have been proudly wearing the braclet of Richard M. Mancini, MIA. It was given to me when I had my son twelve years ago. Everytime I look at my wrist, I can't help but think that he is someones child.

I wish I knew what he looked like and I wonder if his family knows he is thought of on a daily basis.
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POSTED ON 10.30.2002
POSTED BY: Bob Reynolds

Welcome Home

" THE VIGIL "

On that shear green mountain you've waited long,the vigil nears its end
You gave it all, your country called, no doubt you'd do it all again

Your grateful nation comes for you, it needs you back to hide its shame
The mountain gives you up at last, all healing starts with pain

Strangers gather round your site, they come there seeking you
To bring you home, their honor bound, homecoming of Crew-2

We have told the story, of your deeds, so loyal and brave
How you faced the horrid hell of war, of the sacrifice you made

No longer will you endure the Monsoon rain, the wind and overcast
The missions done, the time is short, your on your way at last

It's been so long, were sorry, we knew not what to do
To get you home your loved ones tried, their vigil it's been true

Soon we will gather round and shed some tears for you
And far away that green mountain stands, then turns a Navy Blue


Dedicated to Crew-2 and their Families
VO-67 KIA/LAOS January 11, 1968
Bob Reynolds 3-19-2001 Crew-5 Roadrunner
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