Classmates of MIA Fighter Pilot Gather for 30-Year Reunion : Vietnam War: Shot down in 1969, Larry Stevens was the most conspicuous absentee at his high school function.

Every so often, the same dream invades Harry Whale’s sleep: a picture, strikingly real, of himself answering the front door, with his best friend from high school grinning at him from the walkway.

“Hey, Whale!” shouts Larry Stevens, the track star and all-around standout who was more a brother than a friend--a companion so constant during those teen-age years that classmates tagged them “Harry and Larry.”

But Whale is unable to respond to the man in the dream, a U. S. fighter pilot declared missing in action after being shot down over Laos more than 20 years ago.

Larry Stevens was the most conspicuous absentee at the 30th reunion of Grover Cleveland High School’s Class of 1961 Saturday evening at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Universal City.

Whale, a 48-year-old Woodland Hills contractor, and other alumni gathered in small groups to express their hope that Stevens might make it to their next gathering--a hope that has suddenly been rekindled after more than 20 years of uncertainty.

It was on Valentine’s Day, 1969, that Lt. Cmdr. Stevens, a Navy jet pilot from Canoga Park, was shot down during an attack on a North Vietnamese truck convoy. His family and friends heard and saw nothing of him for more than two decades.

Then in July, a photograph purporting to show three American MIAs--one of them Stevens--surfaced and touched off a nationwide stir. That photo was soon followed by another that shows a bespectacled, paunchy, middle-aged man who is definitely Stevens, according to his mother, who testified last week before the U. S. Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

Whale is not as sure, but simply cannot dismiss the two photos or the fact that some experts have positively identified Stevens as the man in the second one. “There’s just too many things coming up about Larry that aren’t with others,” he said of the 2,000 U. S. servicemen still missing since the end of the Vietnam War.

With wine and the excitement of reacquaintance flowing around them, Whale and other school chums reminisced as they looked over mementos placed on a table as a tribute to the missing pilot. There were old yearbook photos and an impressive trophy awarded in his name each year to an outstanding track athlete at Cleveland.

Stevens’ younger brother Garry urged the crowd to “remember him as I remember my brother--every night, every day.”

Bonnie Krull of Canoga Park said she used to hold the tape at the finish line at track meets in which Larry competed as one of the top hurdlers in the state.

“I enjoyed watching him run. He had such a nice style. He was so graceful when he went over” the hurdles, she said, then confided: “I used to have a crush on him, but that didn’t pan out.”

When word of his disappearance over Laos first reached her, Krull bought a special POW/MIA bracelet engraved with his name and wore it for 10 years.

“My ex-husband said, ‘Can’t you take it off?’ I said, ‘No, I can’t,’ ” she recalled. Krull, who is convinced that Stevens is alive, dug through an old jewelry box after the second photo was published last week and wore the stainless-steel bracelet to the reunion.

Others described Stevens as an extremely personable youth who strived to be the best at everything, evincing a tenacity that would have stood him in good stead if he were caught behind enemy lines.

“If anyone could’ve made it out, it would’ve been Larry,” Linda Tepstein said. “He was a very, very strong person.”

She and Lynn Harper of Thousand Oaks, who set up the table exhibit, joined Garry Stevens on Sunday in Ventura, where about 300 people gathered beneath sunny skies to see a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The two women and another classmate left a centerpiece from the reunion, along with an envelope containing a tribute to their friend, a copy of the reunion program and tickets from the event.

Harper said they wrote a note telling Stevens they looked forward to having him at the next reunion five years from now. “But we expect to see him sooner than that,” she said.

* THE WALL: Families and friends gather at replica of Vietnam Veterans Memorial. B6