The Son Who May Be Symbol

There was no single moment when Jean Blassie came to grips with the death of her son in Vietnam. She hasn’t quite yet.

For the first 10 years after he was shot down in his A-37 jet, she could speak of her loss to no one. Now, on a raw day in this St. Louis suburb of bungalows and strip malls, she can barely stop speaking of him.

On Tuesday, she found herself the center of national attention after it was reported that the six bones interred in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery as the remains of a GI killed in Vietnam, his identify “known but to God,” may be the remains of Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, her son.

Now, she wants answers.

“I know it’s an honor to be in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” she told The Times on Tuesday.

But if the bones in that hallowed resting place--four ribs, a pelvis and a humerus--are demonstrably those of the boy she named Michael Joseph on April 4, 1948, then she wants to know it.

And she wants them back.

Convinced she already knows the answer, she declared forcefully: “He’s not unknown any more.”

Questions of Propriety Over Opening Tomb

Given the division that ripped apart the American fabric as successive presidents prosecuted the Vietnam War to no avail, it is not surprising that this latest news to emerge from the shadows of that blood-soaked era should once again stir debate a generation later.

And so it was on Tuesday that veterans groups and medical ethicists, among others, argued about the propriety of disturbing the remains in Arlington to subject them to DNA testing that was unavailable when they were interred on Memorial Day 1984.

But to those who would do nothing, leaving the bones to rest in the marble-topped tomb, Lt. Blassie’s mother said: “It’s not their son.”

The story of the flier’s death and the parallel, perhaps identical, story of the trip the bones made to the tomb is a convoluted one, replete with missing evidence and allegations of political pressure brought to bear during the heat of the 1984 presidential campaign.

This much is not in doubt:

On May 11, 1972, Blassie--a graduate of the Air Force Academy, a young man who studied four years of Latin, two of Greek and one of Chinese, who played the bassoon and saxophone, of whom his mother said, “He was going to be a millionaire”--was flying the 138th mission of his five months in Vietnam.

Some weeks earlier he had expressed no doubts about his mission.

“Why am I trying to live, if I’m just living to die? I’ll keep on living to fight as long as there’s a fighting reason to live, or for others to live,” he had written to a girlfriend, his words eventually memorialized in a resolution passed by the Missouri House of Representatives.

And then he died.

He was over An Loc, about 60 miles north of Saigon, when his plane, shot from the sky by antiaircraft fire, fell in a fiery heap, his ejection seat activated too late.

When South Vietnamese troops searched the site six months later, they recovered shreds of a flight suit, a military identification card with Blassie’s name and photograph, another piece of identification with his name on it, a pilot’s compass, a holster, the ejection seat, and $1,000 in Vietnamese money. And six bones.

The artifacts suggested that the remains were Blassie’s. But because troops in Vietnam occasionally gave their papers to others to hold, they were not, under military procedures, considered conclusive.

The remains and the other items were dispatched to the U.S. military mortuary in Saigon. The bones were delivered; the other items inexplicably were not.

From there, the remains were sent to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, where they were originally listed as “believed to be those of Michael Blassie.” But lacking conclusive evidence, such as teeth, the lab could make no firm identification.

The story--and the remains--remained at that impasse until 1980, when the Defense Department ruled that they should be declared unknown. Henceforth, they were referred to as “X-26.”

Under Pressure to Inter Remains

In 1984, military and Reagan administration officials were under pressure to place unknown remains from the Vietnam War in the Arlington tomb. It was seen as a gesture of reconciliation within the nation, as well as an expression of respect for the families of those still listed as missing in action in Vietnam. Although 2,400 service members were listed then as missing, only four sets of remains were officially “unknown.”

And those of X-26 were chosen for placement in the tomb. Keeping with Pentagon practice, all the records about the origin of the remains and how they were chosen for the monument were destroyed--in keeping, the Pentagon has said, with the principle that they are to remain forever secret.

“As a child, did he play on some street in a great American city? Did he work beside his father on a farm in America’s heartland? Did he marry? Did he have children?”

Those were the questions President Reagan asked as he presided over an emotion-choked ceremony on that Memorial Day nearly 14 years ago.

They are questions to which Jean Blassie thinks she knows the answers.

Indeed, when she visited the tomb last year, among suspicions prompted by rumors among the MIA-POW remembrance organizations and a report that CBS News was conducting its own investigation, “it was in my mind that he was in the tomb. But there was no way of knowing.”

Now, there may be.

DNA Testing May Answer Question

The Pentagon says the scientific technique that allows the identification of the body’s mitochondrial DNA, the unique design of an individual’s cells, may permit conclusive identification of the remains.

Spokesman Larry Greer says the Defense Department is reviewing whether to take that step.

On Tuesday, three generations of the Blassie family filled the apartment to which the lieutenant’s mother moved several years ago. Michael’s father, George C. Blassie, a meat-cutter, died seven years ago today.

Jean Blassie, a part-time sales clerk in a department store, had gathered the family, much as they came together the night they were notified Michael had been shot down.

Patricia Blassie--one of the lieutenant’s four siblings, three sisters and one brother--lives in Atlanta, is a member of the Air Force Reserve and has performed public relations duties at the Pentagon. She assembled a press kit and quarterbacked the barrage of telephone calls prompted by the initial CBS News report on Monday disclosing that all available evidence indicated the remains in Arlington are those of Michael Joseph Blassie.

Throughout it all, Jean Blassie expressed no bitterness.

On her dead son’s birthdays, she has said a prayer to herself for him. And slowly, the reality of his death became part of the reality of her life.

During those 25 years, the family knew nothing, they said, about the personal artifacts found with the bones eventually designated X-26.

On Tuesday, Jean Blassie simply repeated her mantra: “I want him to come home. If he’s in the tomb, I want him to come home.”