A Family’s Painful Path to Resolution : After 30 Years, Last Designated Vietnam-Era POW Is Reclassified by the Air Force as Killed in Action

Nearly 30 years after their father’s plane was shot down over Laos, the children of Air Force Col. Charles E. Shelton this week received the official word they sought as a symbolic finale to a double family tragedy.

“We all agree we need some closure. We need to put this behind us,” explained Los Angeles resident John Shelton, son of the man who had been the last officially designated prisoner of war from the Vietnam era.

Now, with Col. Shelton’s formal status changed by the Pentagon to “killed in action,” he can be given a memorial service at his wife’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Oct. 4 ceremony also will mark the fourth anniversary of the suicide of Dorothy Marian Shelton. A national leader in the movement to account for missing servicemen, she finally despaired over the lack of progress in her husband’s case and shot herself at her San Diego home in 1990.

Although his body was never found, Col. Shelton’s name will be inscribed on his wife’s tombstone. His active-duty military paychecks, which had continued through this month, will stop. And Shelton’s three sons and two daughters hope the family can back off from the anguished debates about whether the U.S. government has searched enough for servicemen captured or killed in Southeast Asia.

Some activists may react bitterly to the family’s request that the Air Force review Col. Shelton’s status, conceded John Shelton, a 38-year-old actor. But their mother’s death and officials’ more recent, unsuccessful searches in Laos prompted the family’s decision, he said. “I think it’s the healthiest thing we can do,” Shelton added.

Family attorney Tom Reeve, who filed their formal request, agreed. “The children weren’t doing this as any kind of political statement,” said Reeve, who practices in San Diego. “It was something they had to do on a personal level. It was time for resolution.”

Amid much controversy, Dorothy Shelton had fought to keep Col. Shelton’s status as the only Vietnam-era POW. The Air Force agreed to that as a symbolic gesture a decade ago, according to Defense Department spokeswoman Beverly Baker.

This week’s change to “killed in action,” approved by Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall, does not signify a policy switch, Baker stressed. “We will continue to insist on an accounting for our missing in action to the fullest extent possible,” the spokeswoman said.

Leaders in the POW/MIA movement said they respected the Shelton family’s decision even though it means the government no longer lists any Vietnam War prisoners.

“This is what the family wanted and we would be the last to interfere,” said Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of POW/MIA Families. Still, that organization and others will keep pressing their belief that American prisoners remain alive in Southeast Asia.

“I sympathize with the Shelton family because they have suffered so much. But the issue should not be closed,” said former POW Eugene (Red) McDaniel, president of the American Defense Institute, an organization that lobbies for more POW searches.

An American team in March extensively searched the area where Col. Shelton was taken captive in Laos and the area where he reportedly was buried, according to a Defense Department press release issued this week. The team “did not find his remains or any evidence he was alive,” the statement reported.

Shelton was shot down on his 33rd birthday, April 29, 1965. U.S. rescuers contacted him by radio on the ground and he indicated he was in good condition. Villagers later said he was taken prisoner by communist Laotian forces.

His wife became a prominent crusader in the POW cause, appearing on TV talk shows, testifying in Washington and traveling to Asia. At the same time, she raised five children alone, the youngest of whom was only 18 months old when her husband was shot down.

Every new reported sighting of POWs raised her hopes and then crushed them. “This is what took our mother. The roller coaster ride every day,” said John Shelton. He was 9 when his father was captured and remembers him as “a typical military dad who was kind of strict.”

The family is expected to receive some life insurance payments as a result of the Air Force decision, Reeve said. But the family would have done better financially by keeping the POW status and the military paychecks, he explained. “Their best financial interest was to hunker down and hope nobody noticed this was coming in every month,” the attorney said.

According to the Pentagon, a hearing board of three generals with combat experience in Southeast Asia recommended Shelton’s status change to killed in action. With Widnall’s agreement, “the change resolves the issue for his family and allows them to give Col. Shelton the proper memorial he deserves,” the statement said.

Now scattered in Los Angeles, San Diego and Kentucky, the family will meet at Arlington Cemetery next month for a ceremony that will include a 21-gun salute to Shelton.

“It will be an era gone by for us,” said John Shelton.