STOREY, THOMAS GORDON
Name: Thomas Gordon Storey
Rank/Branch: O3/United States Air Force, pilot
Unit: 11th TRS
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record: Kansas City MO
Date of Loss: 16 January 1967
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 214600 North 1062100 East
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: RF4C
Missions: 34
Other Personnel in Incident: Ronald Mastin, returnee
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews.
REMARKS: 730304 RELEASED BY DRV
SOURCE: WE CAME HOME copyright 1977
Captain and Mrs. Frederic A Wyatt (USNR Ret), Barbara Powers Wyatt, Editor
P.O.W. Publications, 10250 Moorpark St., Toluca Lake, CA 91602
Text is reproduced as found in the original publication (including date and
spelling errors).
UPDATE - 09/95 by the P.O.W. NETWORK, Skidmore, MO
THOMAS G. STOREY
Major - United States Air Force
Shot Down: January 16, 1967
Released: March 4, 1973
Major Storey, born in Kansas City, Missouri and reared in Galesburg,
Illinois, was 41 years old when he was released after more than six years of
imprisonment. Prior to his military service, he earned his Bachelors,
Masters and Honorary Doctorate degrees from Western Illinois, Bradley and
Millikin Universities.
He has two children; Pamela Susan and Kurt Duncan. The following statements
are some of Major Storey's personal reflections.
During my imprisonment, I pondered the then and now, those foundations upon
which this great nation was founded, the telling points in history that
clearly defined to all the necessity for such sacrifices as mine, and
foremost, the present and future responsibilities of all freedom loving
people. I thought of the strange and changing circumstances and trials of
our America and the comforting knowledge that throughout all previous
national crises an undaunted spirit of the American man, the American ideal,
and the American thought had been sustained within the hearts or most
Americans and rang as a clarion for future generations. I thought of America
not as a place, but a process. America-then as now-the great experiment.
There can be no future for us as individuals or for this Great American
Experiment without faith, a strong family unit, true brotherhood, and an
abiding sense of love of country. This future - a continuation of a free
society within the throes of a Technitronic Age when post - industrial
influences threaten moral principles, foreign policy, and political unity -
will require of each of us a high regard for principles, a lessening of
materialistic desires, a deep personal commitment to serve a cause - and an
Almighty. Unity is the key - unity that precludes the human tendency to
magnify the immediate and projects itself in the form of personal,
individual investment. Invest what you have - time, talents, all. I dare you
to beat your best. You must know that you become what you think and do.
Given America's past, beset with great change, given the now, beset with
swift and transforming change, America's salvation will lie in the ability
of each American to crystallize and perpetuate those enduring American
qualities that have gone before. America's destiny as a people, and the
successful continuum of the Great Experiment - this America - will depend
upon how well we fulfill the pledge to ourselves; the pledge of freedom, of
equality, of a more decent life for all. The enduring purpose that nurtured
our nation's birth and dedicated all Americans to a life of challenge in
pursuit of individual fulfillment and the fulfillment of all mankind will
continue if a great people will allow several threads from the past to be
woven into the fabric of the future.
December 1996
Thomas Storey retired from the United States Air Force as a Lt. Colonel. He
and his wife Sally reside in Tokyo, Japan.
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