THE WALL OF FACES

CAPT Leo S. Boston

Missing Vietnam War pilot ID'd; children to bring remains back to Colorado
By Liz Navratil, The Denver Post, July 2011
It's been 45 years since Bethany Boston-Johnson saw her father, COL Leo "Sid" Boston, an Air Force pilot who went missing during a search-and-rescue mission in the Vietnam War. This Sunday, Boston-Johnson, 52, and her brother, John Boston, will fly to Hawaii to bring back what remains of their father — a sliver of a kneecap collected by a Vietnamese farmer more than a decade ago. The U.S. Department of Defense announced Tuesday that it had identified the pilot using DNA from his mother and brother. "We're in awe of two things," said Boston-Johnson, of Vail. "We're clearly in awe of the DNA technology that could give us this answer, and we're also in awe of the mantra of the military of 'no man left behind.' This is probably one of the more dramatic examples of that." Soldiers hoped to find Boston, 30, of Cañon City, after he went missing April 29, 1966, while flying over Son La province in Vietnam, near the Laos border. Fighting kept them away. Service members got their next tip in 1996, when members led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which seeks to find missing soldiers, interviewed a farmer in Son La province. The farmer had a helmet, a revolver, some aircraft pieces and a kneecap. He refused to hand them over but allowed the American and Vietnamese workers to take photos. "Sometimes the villagers were protective for whatever reasons," said Maj. Carie Parker, spokeswoman for the POW/Missing Personnel Office in the Department of Defense. Nasty weather made it hard for workers to continue their investigation. In 1997, after they determined that the artifacts were American, workers returned to Son La and interviewed more people who said they saw plane parts nearby. But a dam had recently burst, flooding the space where a plane was supposed to be. It took three years for officials to persuade the Vietnamese farmer to hand over the kneecap. In April 2000, the bone landed at the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, which works to identify missing soldiers. In June of that year, lab workers tried to match DNA from the bone with DNA from the pilot's mother and brother, Edythe Marie and Jon Boston. But technology wasn't advanced enough to draw a conclusion from the tiny bone. A decade later, they tried again with new equipment and got close to a 99 percent match, Boston-Johnson said. This April, Boston-Johnson received a call from Air Force Mortuary Affairs "for the first time in 45 years." "They had never used the word mortuary in conjunction with my father," Boston-Johnson said. It was then that she knew they had ID'd her father. "I was speechless," she said. She and her family will hold a funeral service for her father at 1 PM July 15 at the Air Force Academy Cemetery near Colorado Springs. "Our sense of closure has been greatly increased," Boston-Johnson said. "There's still a lot left to the imagination about what might have happened that day, but with the DNA finding, we find ourselves most of the way there." In addition to Boston-Johnson and her brother, of Chicago, and Boston's mother and brother, the pilot also is survived by daughter Stephanie Boston Danielson and two sisters.

Dear Colonel Leo Sydney Boston, 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

It truly breaks my heart that GOD was removed from his memorial at Canon City. A man that gave his life for his country cannot stand up for what I am sure ne believed in. The least you could do is put GOD back in his memorial. After all this country was founded in the belief in GOD. My wife and I passed the memorial several times while visiting the area. It hurt each time we passed .

Leo is buried at United States Air Force Academy Cemetery in Colorado Springs,CO.