Mother’s Quest for MIA Son Now in Senate Hands : Vietnam War: Gladys Fleckenstein tells a committee that there is evidence the pilot from Canoga Park is still alive.

After her son’s plane was shot down over Laos on Valentine’s Day in 1969, Gladys Fleckenstein began a search that would take her to Paris, Geneva and Laos. Her quest ended Thursday in a Senate hearing room before members of the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

“This is the end of my journey for my son. I’ve gone as far as I can go, I’m afraid, with trying to find out about my son and bring him home,” the former Woodland Hills resident said in an interview shortly before she began testifying before the committee.

“It’s in their hands now,” Fleckenstein said of the panel members. “They are going to get to the bottom of this one way or the other, if it’s going to be resolved.”

Fleckenstein, who lives in Big Bear Lake, was one of several relatives of POWs and MIAs still listed as missing in Southeast Asia who told the committee there is evidence that their sons, fathers and brothers remain alive. Their testimony capped a 10-hour session as the panel wrapped up three days of hearings on the emotional issue.

The Senate committee was formed in July after the public release of a series of photographs that purportedly depict live POWs. Pentagon officials have stated that they have no reason to believe that any missing servicemen remain in Southeast Asia.

Fleckenstein said her son, Navy pilot Lt. Cmdr. Larry J. Stevens of Canoga Park, is one of three men pictured in a black-and-white photograph that was released last summer. More recently, a Tennessee judge presented Fleckenstein with a color photograph supposedly taken last year of an individual she has identified as her son.

“I believe it is my son,” Fleckenstein told senators looking at an enlargement of the color photo. She said the photograph has been analyzed three times and that experts agree that the man pictured is Stevens.

Michael Charney, a Colorado State University specialist in identifying human remains and people in photos, announced over the weekend that he had identified the man in the photo as Stevens by comparing it to a picture taken of him before he disappeared.

Fleckenstein read to the committee excerpts from a report by a Defense Intelligence Agency official who analyzed the color photograph: “I cannot say whether or not the . . . purported images show the same man. The men in the images do look somewhat alike.”

Select Committee Chairman Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) asked Fleckenstein about her faith in the authenticity of the photographs in light of reports that other alleged pictures of MIAs, believed to be genuine, have turned out to be fraudulent.

Fleckenstein replied, “My grandson took a look at this picture and he disappeared for a while and came out with a picture of Larry’s father, and I was in shock at the complete, total likeness to Larry’s father, who would have been the approximate age that Larry is today. And that certainly was another convincer to me.”

However, she said she was “quite sure that there could be people out there who are working” to exploit this situation, “because we’ve heard of that.”

But Fleckenstein added: “I have to accept that is my son because it is. That is my son. And I’ve been fighting for 22 1/2 years to find that boy, and I know he’s alive.”

In the interview before her testimony to the committee, Fleckenstein said that she is “very much encouraged” by the Senate hearings.

“When I walked in here, I didn’t have a good feeling about the committee,” she said. “But after two days of sitting through this, I am very impressed with everyone on the committee. . . . I really, really have faith again.”

Although her son has been missing “a long, long, long time,” Fleckenstein said she senses that he is alive in the same way she once sensed that he was in danger.

On the day Stevens’ plane went down, Fleckenstein was traveling on a plane with her mother, she said.

“He was not on my mind at all. And all of a sudden I felt like I was thrown back against my seat. I turned to my mother and said, ‘Something has happened to Larry.’ And sure enough, the next day the chaplain was there. . . .

“He’s come to me so many times, begging my help to help him come home. . . . I knew he was alive. Now I know he’s sitting over there waiting to come home.”

How has she kept her faith after so many years?

Her husband, Jack Fleckenstein, Stevens’ stepfather, explained: “Suppose it was your son or your husband who was over there. You might shake and shatter and have to repair your heart every now and then, but you’d still go after him if there was the least chance of him being there.”