OFFUTT, GARY PHELPS
REMAINS RETURNED 03/97
Name: Gary Phelps Offutt
Rank/Branch: O2/United States Air Force,Pilot
Unit:
Date of Birth: 04 April 1940
Home City of Record: Stewartsville MO
Date of Loss: 01 October 1965
Country of Loss: South Vietnam, Phong Dinh
Loss Coordinates: 095916N 1052333E
Status (in 1973): Body not recoverd
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F100D, #3543
Incident No: 0159
Other Personnel in Incident: none
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK March 1997 from one or more of the
following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with
POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews, newspaper reports.
REMARKS:
[rtw0326.97 03/27/96]
Remains of U.S. soldier found
WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuter) - The remains of a U.S. pilot killed
during an air strike in the Vietnam War have been returned to the United
States for burial, the Defence Department said Wednesday.
It said 1st Lt. Gary Offutt was unable to eject when his F-100 Super
Sabre went into a near-vertical dive during a strafing run near Can Tho in
South Vietnam Oct. 1, 1965, according to another U.S. pilot.
Offutt's remains were recovered and later identified after joint
U.S.-Vietnamese teams investigated the crash site in 1993, 1994 and 1995.
His remains were returned to his hometown, Stewartsville, Missouri.
Offutt had been listed as unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War, the
department said. With identification of his remains, 2,127 Americans remain
unaccounted for in that war, it added.
[sjnp328.97 03/30/97]
Bittersweet reunion: Family finds closure
Missing No More
SON SAYS GOODBYE TO FATHER HE BARELY KNEW
BY RONA KOBELL.
ST. JOSEPH NEWS-PRESS
For nearly 32 years, Gregory Offutt has dreamed of holding his father
one last time.
He and his family have awaited a reunion ever since 1st Lt. Gary Phelps
Offutt disappeared Oct. 25,1965, when his F-100 fighter jet was
destroyed in a combat mission over Vietnam's Mekong Delta.
On Wednesday, the U.S. government flew Mr. Offutt and his grand,mother,
90-year-old Irene Phelps Offutt, to Travis Air Force Base near
Sacramento, Calif., to receive the pilot's remains.
It was a more emotional homecoming than Mr. Offutt had anticipated.
"I used to think I didn't feel this closeness until this came about," he
said.
He said the government had told the family his father was presumed dead
a month after he disappeared. Mr, Offutt never had any illusions about
seeing his father alive again, but he did want to see him, to give him a
proper burial and say goodbye.
At 2 p.m. Saturday Mr. Offutt and his family will get their chance.
The pilot will be buried full military honors at the Cameron Memory
Garden Cemetery The Air Force will give him a 21-gun salute and a jet
fly-over.
Bert Goben, a past president of the local chapter of the Vietnam
Veterans of America, is asking local veterans to show their support. And
the pilot's friends from his Stewartsville hometown will be able to pay
their last respects.
For Mr. Offutt, the burial unearthed feelings for his father he never
knew he had.
While his grandmother has clung tightly to Gary's memory all these
years, Mr. Offutt said he hadn't felt the bond until the past few weeks.
Now, he says, it's not just his father's memory but his example that
lives on in his heart.
"I look at my family, and I know I need to be the father that my father
was," said Mr. Offutt, who works as a roofing contractor in St. Joseph.
He and his wife have four children and another on the way.
That kind of father was a man of conviction who followed his dreams,
even to Vietnam.
Gary joined the Air Force after graduating from the University of
Missouri at Columbia. He had taken pilot lessons since high school, and
his unit was credited with more than 4,000 hours of combat against North
Vietnam. He was scheduled to take his most important flight-back to his
wife, who has since remarried, and his 1 1/2-year-old son-just one month
after the fateful mission.
Reports say an oil can was the only indicator that his F-100 had plunged
into the delta's 100-ft. abyss.
The Offutt family has waited for other indicators, and therein lies some
of the bitterness associated with these homecomings.
Mr. Offutt said his family wrote letters to the federal government, but
didn't receive concrete answers.
In 1993, a joint U.S.-Vietnamese mission began excavating the marshy
area where the pilot's plane was believed to have crashed. Torrential
rains and fading villagers' memories hamstrung their efforts.
Finally in 1995, excavators found a tooth, nine bones, fractured pieces
of on aircraft and part of a watch. These, they said, belonged to Lt.
Gary Offutt.
His son has them now, along with faded snapshots of his father He also
keeps his father's awards, including the Purple Heart medal, which was
awarded posthumously.
He has his own four-year tenure in the Marine Corps, inspired in part by
his father's service. And he has his grandmother, who carries the
freshest memories of a son who died too soon.
He knows he has a lot more than many others like him. The remains of two
other MIAs came to Travis Air Force Base on the same plane as those of
his father.
But no one came to greet them, a homecoming shared by many who survived
the conflict.
Mr. Offutt attributes that to the anger the country harbors over the
war.
"I don't understand that," he said. "There has been a lot of deceit
involved in this war. But these men fought and died for their country
It's not their fault at all."
When the pilot returns to his boyhood home Saturday he will have plenty
of greeters. And his son will be in the front row, whispering a private
goodbye that's long overdue.
[Distributed through the P.O.W. NETWORK]
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