POW-MIA Families, Cautiously Optimistic, Mark Recognition Day

The families of American servicemen missing in Southeast Asia, gathered Friday on the annual POW-MIA Recognition Day to hear Vice President George Bush pledge the Reagan Administration’s enduring determination to obtain “the fullest possible accounting” of their loved ones, expressed cautious hope that their long wait may soon be over.

About 900 relatives had been flown in on military planes to meet here and do what they could to find out where their sons, husbands and fathers were and whether they were alive or dead.

Recent developments contributed a tone of guarded optimism to the 16th annual convention of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. During the decade since the fall of Vietnam, a period in which family members say their concerns often were neglected by the government, such optimism has been missing.

Remains of 26 Servicemen

The recent developments include the successful excavation last February of an American aircraft crash site in Laos, an agreement by Vietnam to return the remains of 26 U.S. servicemen and Vietnam’s expressed determination to resolve the issue within two years.

Ann Mills Griffiths, the league’s executive director, said the return of the 26 remains--the most returned since the end of the war--was an “encouraging signal of seriousness.”

Across the nation, the 2,464 men still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia were saluted with flags, speeches and memorial services.

Black-and-white POW-MIA flags flew all day over the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and other federal buildings, and one was raised at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a black granite wall inscribed with the names of the 58,022 Americans killed or lost in Vietnam.

Second Crash Site

At the convention, Bush received one standing ovation after another as he announced that Laos “has agreed to the excavation of a second crash site in the coming dry season” and echoed President Reagan’s pledge that “we will write no last chapters, we will close no books, we will put away no final memories” of the Vietnam War “until your questions about the missing and about possible prisoners of war are answered.”

“It’s beginning to look like they (the Vietnamese) are opening up their eyes,” said Gladys Fleckenstein of Big Bear, Calif., whose son, Lt. Cmdr. Larry James Stevens, was shot down over Laos on Valentine’s Day, 1969.

“I don’t know if my son’s alive or dead,” she said. “He was shot down out of the sky one night and that was it. I just want to know what happened to my son.”

Bitterness, Skepticism

For many, however, the enthusiasm was tempered with considerable bitterness and skepticism. Some of those present insisted that Americans remain alive in Southeast Asia and that the government has withheld information about them.

When Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.), a member of the House task force that recently rejected such allegations, told the convention that “we have an obligation not to raise false hopes and expectations,” some responded with isolated boos and shouts of “Rambo! Rambo!”--a reference to the film character who rescues American prisoners of war still in Southeast Asia.

“Every day, every second we wait, there are live Americans waiting” to be picked up, said Brian Burke, a Vietnam veteran from Bloomington, Minn.

Pentagon Ceremony

Earlier, family members had stood silently on the Pentagon lawn as a single helicopter, trailing streams of purple smoke, peeled away from a cluster of low-flying helicopters in a ceremony symbolic of “the missing man” or those who died in war.

Gen. John A. Vessey Jr., the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed “frustration and disgust” with the time it has taken for the Vietnamese government to provide information about the missing men and promised that the armed services would “carry on with the task at hand.”

In St. Petersburg, Fla., military planes flew in formation over the City Hall, while 2,464 red, white and blue balloons--one for each of the missing men--were released and sailed through the sky above Shelton, Conn.