[Guest post by DRJ]
Veterans Day is today and will also be observed tomorrow by the government and many businesses. Veterans Day occurs November 11 because it replaced Armistice Day, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I.
As stated in the President’s Veterans Day proclamation, it is a day “dedicated to the extraordinary Americans who protected our freedom in years past, and to those who protect it today.” In my community, many homes and businesses fly flags to honor our veterans and there are several memorial services, banquets, and other events scheduled to remember the vets. In addition, a local judge established a special memorial honoring area veterans who died in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Tomorrow, a Viet Nam veteran will be laid to rest in Fort Worth, Texas:
“In the late summer of 2002, a team of Defense Department MIA hunters in Ho Chi Minh City got a call from their counterparts in the Vietnamese government. Some Vietnamese fishermen had discovered human bones and airplane wreckage off an Phu Quoc island in the Gulf of Thailand. They wanted to turn over the remains and believed that it would guarantee them an opportunity to immigrate.
The Americans took the remains and wreckage given to them and attempted — unsuccessfully — to get to the underwater site a few miles offshore. Some months later, the bones were flown to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, where they stayed in a laboratory for five years.
On Monday, those remains come home, to a hallowed ground that overlooks the old Naval Air Station Dallas, where a young Fort Worth man took the naval officer’s oath in 1964. That was before Lt.j.g. Frank E. Hand III left for the war in Vietnam, before he and 11 other young men went down trying to find Viet Cong gun-running boats.”
Lt. Hand was raised in Fort Worth with his younger brother Bruce. He enlisted in the Navy after he was declared eligible for the draft. By all accounts, he was an officer and gentleman:
“He was an outgoing boy at Carter-Riverside High School, an Eagle Scout, an accomplished swimmer. He, and later his brother, worked summers as lifeguards at the Ridglea Country Club. “He made enough money to buy a nice car,” his brother said. “He was mechanically inclined, so he could work on it. It was a black, two-door Pontiac Bonneville, a ’58, if I remember. Talk about a cool car.”
After graduation in 1960, Frank started at what was then Arlington State College to study architecture. He did that for three years but decided to take a break and work for an architecture firm to earn money. The draft board noticed the change and reclassified him as eligible. So Frank Hand, presumably unwilling to chance the Army or the infantry, went to NAS Dallas to compete for a spot in officer candidate school and a shot at naval aviation.
Linda Merriman, a local girl in Pensacola, Fla., thought she had met the most gorgeous man in the world. A Texas boy, a Navy officer candidate and pilot in training. He drove a new Corvette. He was, without a doubt, living the high life. “It was like Officer and a Gentleman,” Bruce said of his brother’s relationship.
After a year of dating, Linda and Frank Hand wed on a warm August day in 1966 in the First Baptist Church in Pensacola, an arch of crossed swords over their heads when they left the sanctuary.”
Frank and Linda had been married 15 months when he was deployed to Southeast Asia:
“He wrote Linda a letter every day he was gone, beginning in November 1967. “He just wanted me to stay busy and pass the time because I had so much free time on my hands,” she said. “He would tell me all was going well and ‘I wish I could be with you.’ They were great love letters. I kept all of them.
“He called me at Christmastime. I believe that’s the last time we were able to speak.”
Frank and his crewmates were all lost when their plane went down on a routine mission scouting for Viet Cong off the Vietnamese coast. Searchers recovered one of Frank’s boots but his body was not recovered. His funeral was held in the same church he had been married in 20 months before.
This past summer, the Navy notified Bruce Hand that his brother’s remains had been positively identified. Bruce requested burial in a national cemetery, something that normally would not be allowed since Frank already had one national cemetery burial plot. However, the regulation was waived and Lt.j.g. Frank E. Hand III will be buried tomorrow at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery:
“The Navy agreed to provide four F/A-18 Hornets to perform the “missing man” formation over the cemetery on Monday, a particularly special gesture for Bruce. The executive officer of Patrol Squadron 26 is coming to Texas for the service. “This has all been good,” Bruce said. “Everything has just come together beautifully.”
[Frank’s wife] Linda Shoemaker will be there, too, with the friend that introduced her to Frank 42 years ago. “I never, ever dreamed of something like this,” she said. “I’ve shed many tears since we got the information. I am thrilled to bring him home. But it opens up a lot of hurt, and a lot of happiness, too.”
God bless Frank Hand and his family. Please take a moment to remember and honor all current and former veterans.
— DRJ