bobdina
05-04-2010, 08:46 PM
38 years after death, Vietnam vet returns home
By Mike Clary - South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP
Posted : Tuesday May 4, 2010 15:08:26 EDT
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — With only two weeks left in his Vietnam War combat mission, Air Force Sgt. James Harold Alley sent a letter to his family in Plantation, promising to see them soon.
“When you turn around, turn around slowly,” wrote the 22-year-old Stranahan High School graduate. “I might be there.”
More than 38 years later, the remains of Alley — killed in April 1972 after he volunteered to help rescue a jet pilot shot down by the North Vietnamese — will finally come home.
“Now we know where he’s at,” said B.R. Alley, James Alley’s uncle and a retired Manatee County sheriff’s deputy. “He’ll be buried between his granddad and his dad.”
The homecoming this week for Alley’s remains marks the end of a long odyssey for the young Air Force photographer and for his family, which for decades maintained his bedroom — first in Plantation and later in Arcadia — and his yellow 1967 Chevrolet Camaro just he way he left them.
“My parents never got over his loss,” said Tim Alley, 36, who was adopted by Harold and Syble Alley a year after James was killed.
News of Alley’s homecoming sparked memories among many classmates, including some who posted recollections on Stranahan’s Class of 1967 website.
“Jim stayed under the radar most of the time. He didn’t have a big social circle, but he was a nice, nice guy,” said Paul Franzelas, 60, a retired Fort Lauderdale businessman who worked with Alley in an after-school apprenticeship program. In a note to Tim Alley, Franzelas wrote, “Jim and I spent a lot of time talking about cars, transmissions, auto painting and, of course, girls.”
Bob Dinkins, also a Vietnam War veteran, said he ate lunch with Alley for years. “I met him in the eighth or ninth grade,” said Dinkins, 60, who now lives in St. Augustine. “He was a great friend, a quiet guy and a sprinter, a natural runner.”
In 1978, Tim, an older sister, June, and their parents moved from Plantation to Arcadia, where Harold Alley’s family lived. In a new house there, his parents replicated James’ Plantation bedroom, setting out his track trophies and model cars, pinning the Stranahan High pennant to the wall, spreading the tropical flowered comforter over the single bed.
The yellow Camaro — with James’ graduation tassel hanging from the rearview mirror — was covered with a tarp and stored in Harold Alley’s business, a transmission repair shop.
And everything stayed that way until the house was destroyed by Hurricane Charley in 2004, Tim Alley said.
“In pictures of my dad after James died, you never saw him smile,” said Tim Alley, a Desoto County firefighter and paramedic who lives with his wife, Lindsey, and their two children.
The story begins in 1968, when Alley, a year out of high school and facing the military draft, enlisted in the Air Force.
Nearing the end of his four-year tour, he was stationed in Thailand and on temporary assignment in Vietnam as a photographer when he volunteered for a mission to find Lt. Col. Iceal Hambleton, who had been shot down near Quang Tri while escorting a flight of B-52 bombers.
Alley was aboard a Sikorksy HH-53C helicopter on April 6, 1972, when it was hit by enemy fire and exploded in the air. Alley and five others were killed.
Hambleton evaded capture for 11 days before being rescued. His story became the basis for the 1988 movie “Bat 21,” starring Gene Hackman and Danny Glover, and later was recounted in “The Rescue of Bat 21,” a 1998 book by Darrel Whitcomb.
For more than two decades, the remains of the Jolly Green Giant crew were unaccounted for. Then, in 1994, Vietnam returned the remains of about 240 U.S. casualties, including at least some remains of those aboard the Jolly Green Giant.
The crew was interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in 1997. Although James was thought to be among them, no positive identification was made.
Finally, this year, the Defense Department’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii announced a match between a DNA sample from James’ mother and more recovered remains.
Before he died in 2007, Harold Alley signed over the title of the yellow Camaro to Tim, asking his surviving son never to sell it. With his mother Syble, 79, in an assisted-living facility, Tim also has possession of James’ crated belongings.
This week Tim Alley will fly to Honolulu and retrieve the remains of the brother he never met.
“I knew him only through family stories,” Alley said. “He was an all-American kid. I’m told that anybody who ever met him liked him. He was a hero.”
Burial is scheduled for Saturday in Oakridge Cemetery in Arcadia.
By Mike Clary - South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP
Posted : Tuesday May 4, 2010 15:08:26 EDT
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — With only two weeks left in his Vietnam War combat mission, Air Force Sgt. James Harold Alley sent a letter to his family in Plantation, promising to see them soon.
“When you turn around, turn around slowly,” wrote the 22-year-old Stranahan High School graduate. “I might be there.”
More than 38 years later, the remains of Alley — killed in April 1972 after he volunteered to help rescue a jet pilot shot down by the North Vietnamese — will finally come home.
“Now we know where he’s at,” said B.R. Alley, James Alley’s uncle and a retired Manatee County sheriff’s deputy. “He’ll be buried between his granddad and his dad.”
The homecoming this week for Alley’s remains marks the end of a long odyssey for the young Air Force photographer and for his family, which for decades maintained his bedroom — first in Plantation and later in Arcadia — and his yellow 1967 Chevrolet Camaro just he way he left them.
“My parents never got over his loss,” said Tim Alley, 36, who was adopted by Harold and Syble Alley a year after James was killed.
News of Alley’s homecoming sparked memories among many classmates, including some who posted recollections on Stranahan’s Class of 1967 website.
“Jim stayed under the radar most of the time. He didn’t have a big social circle, but he was a nice, nice guy,” said Paul Franzelas, 60, a retired Fort Lauderdale businessman who worked with Alley in an after-school apprenticeship program. In a note to Tim Alley, Franzelas wrote, “Jim and I spent a lot of time talking about cars, transmissions, auto painting and, of course, girls.”
Bob Dinkins, also a Vietnam War veteran, said he ate lunch with Alley for years. “I met him in the eighth or ninth grade,” said Dinkins, 60, who now lives in St. Augustine. “He was a great friend, a quiet guy and a sprinter, a natural runner.”
In 1978, Tim, an older sister, June, and their parents moved from Plantation to Arcadia, where Harold Alley’s family lived. In a new house there, his parents replicated James’ Plantation bedroom, setting out his track trophies and model cars, pinning the Stranahan High pennant to the wall, spreading the tropical flowered comforter over the single bed.
The yellow Camaro — with James’ graduation tassel hanging from the rearview mirror — was covered with a tarp and stored in Harold Alley’s business, a transmission repair shop.
And everything stayed that way until the house was destroyed by Hurricane Charley in 2004, Tim Alley said.
“In pictures of my dad after James died, you never saw him smile,” said Tim Alley, a Desoto County firefighter and paramedic who lives with his wife, Lindsey, and their two children.
The story begins in 1968, when Alley, a year out of high school and facing the military draft, enlisted in the Air Force.
Nearing the end of his four-year tour, he was stationed in Thailand and on temporary assignment in Vietnam as a photographer when he volunteered for a mission to find Lt. Col. Iceal Hambleton, who had been shot down near Quang Tri while escorting a flight of B-52 bombers.
Alley was aboard a Sikorksy HH-53C helicopter on April 6, 1972, when it was hit by enemy fire and exploded in the air. Alley and five others were killed.
Hambleton evaded capture for 11 days before being rescued. His story became the basis for the 1988 movie “Bat 21,” starring Gene Hackman and Danny Glover, and later was recounted in “The Rescue of Bat 21,” a 1998 book by Darrel Whitcomb.
For more than two decades, the remains of the Jolly Green Giant crew were unaccounted for. Then, in 1994, Vietnam returned the remains of about 240 U.S. casualties, including at least some remains of those aboard the Jolly Green Giant.
The crew was interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in 1997. Although James was thought to be among them, no positive identification was made.
Finally, this year, the Defense Department’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii announced a match between a DNA sample from James’ mother and more recovered remains.
Before he died in 2007, Harold Alley signed over the title of the yellow Camaro to Tim, asking his surviving son never to sell it. With his mother Syble, 79, in an assisted-living facility, Tim also has possession of James’ crated belongings.
This week Tim Alley will fly to Honolulu and retrieve the remains of the brother he never met.
“I knew him only through family stories,” Alley said. “He was an all-American kid. I’m told that anybody who ever met him liked him. He was a hero.”
Burial is scheduled for Saturday in Oakridge Cemetery in Arcadia.