THE WALL OF FACES

My name is Warren P. Mackey, and my father of the same name was aboard the uss Canberra the day that your plane crashed at sea. My Father was the one of the sailors that recovered you from the ocean on that day in 1965. ever since the he has been trying to find out who you were, because he never knew your name, but sees your face everyday in his mind. Two years ago I got invovled in trying to help my Father find out who you were so he can pay his respects in person by name at the traveling wall. It has been a long search, but with resistance I have found you. My father is very happy to know your name, and that you gave your life for a cause that was just. god bless you and your family.

You fly your F-105
Soar up so high
feeling more than alive
Plane sputters like a sigh


Cockpit engulfed in flames
Think of loved ones
Name remembered in fame
Glory burns like a thousand suns

Frank Lanning was a sports cartoonist with the Providence Journal, and a family friend. This piece appeared in the Journal newspaper after my uncle Franks death.

Uncle Frank was one of my mother's favorite brothers. I often heard stories about how they played as children. Even though his wife Dot has long since remarried, we still call her Aunt Dot and keep in close contact with her.

I remember Uncle Frank as a quiet but fun loving man. The service kept him away from lots of family gatherings, but the times he was there, he made sure to interact with the kids. I can still see him helping clean the dishes after one rather large family gathering. I can still see him wagging his wings as he did a flyby after visiting us in Orlando one year. I still have some gifts that he sent from Europe one Christmas. I remember his wedding to Aunt Dot and that it was on Christmas Eve. I was five or so, and when we got home late, my mother tucked me into bed. I heard what I thought were reindeer hooves tapping on the roof, which my father much later assured me were probably mice or squirrels, but boy was I excited.

Vietnam really came home hard on that April day. I was a freshman at American University in Washington, DC and got a call from my mother that night. The phones were gang pay phones in the middle of the floor, and I couldn't understand why my mother was calling me so late.

I couldn't believe the news she told me. My Uncle Fred, also USAF, was meeting the body in California and was escorting it to DC for burial in Arlington. I was to meet Uncle Fred and make arrangements for housing him and for congressional honors. Uncle Frank made Time magazine and the Congressional Record.

For years I kept a small jar of soil from his gravesite. I think I finally got rid of the Congressional Record journal. I had protested the war before Uncle Frank's death and did so even more after his death. All deaths in Vietnam were useless and his personally so.

Roger Bennett Pelser