Bio, Gist, Tommy E.

GIST, TOMMY EMERSON

Name: Tommy Emerson Gist
Rank/Branch: United States Air Force/O3
Unit:
Date of Birth: 29 October 1939
Home City of Record: Durant OK
Date of Loss: 18 May 1968
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 173155 North  1063714 East
Status (in 1973):
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: RF4C
Missions:
Other Personnel in Incident: Terru Uyeyama, returnee
Refno: 1181

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 and CACCF = Combined Action
Combat Casualty File.

REMARKS:

EGRESS report states UYEYAMA SAW ID CARD - CERTAIN GIST DIED --
HIT IN REAR COCKPIT/EJECTED/SHOT AT/NVN SAID DEAD)

                                                [ap0518.94 05/25/94]
APn  18-May-94
                         Vietnam-Sharing Grief

Copyright 1994
The Associated Press.
By GEORGE ESPER
AP Special Correspondent

   HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Sara Gist Bernasconi looked at her watch and
remembered that chilling moment in time.

   At 4 p.m., 26 years ago Wednesday, her husband, Air Force Capt. Tommy
Gist, was shot down and declared missing over North Vietnam.

   At 4 p.m. on May 18, 1994, Mrs. Bernasconi stepped from a van and
into a dilapidated, cramped, two-room home in Hanoi.

   She marked the solemn anniversary with a slight, gray-haired
Vietnamese woman and her family over a bowl of noodles, the only thing
they could afford.

   Mrs. Bernasconi, 52, sat down to dinner with Tran Thi Tien, 55, whose
husband has been missing in action since 1970. They shared their sorrow
in a home not far from where U.S. bombs fell and American airmen were
downed.

   "It's good that you come to visit Vietnam and you traveled a long
distance," Mrs. Tien told Mrs. Bernasconi through an interpreter.

   "Today is the anniversary of the shoot-down of my husband," Mrs.
Bernasconi said. "How old were you when you met your husband?"

   "I was married in 1960 in my brother's house in Hanoi. I was 20. My
husband went to the South in 1965. I was pregnant when my husband left."

   "I have two sons about the same age as your sons."

   "Your husband's remains found?"

   "No."

   "The same with my husband," Mrs. Tien continued. "I only know he died
in the South. We want to go find his remains but because of our economic
difficulties we cannot go. Your husband died in Dong Hoi."

   "I don't know. He's missing."

   "Too many losses for the families. We've suffered too many losses."

   "Do you feel anger?"

   "We feel very sorry and we miss him."

   "We live a world apart and share so many of the same feelings."

   Mrs. Bernasconi lives in Albuquerque, N.M., with her second husband,
Louis Bernasconi, a former prisoner of war. She is on a weeklong visit
to Vietnam with a delegation from the Vietnam Veterans of America, where
she serves as co-chairwoman of the national POW-MIA Committee.

   One of Mrs. Tien's two sons reached into his wallet and presented
Mrs. Bernasconi with a small sapphire stone. Her gift to them was some
T-shirts inscribed Veterans Initiative.

   Earlier in the day, American veterans handed over battlefield
souvenirs to the Vietnamese in an effort to help their families locate
their own loved ones lost in the war. Vietnamese veterans said they,
too, would launch a movement to help gather information for American
families.

   U.S. officials say there are still 2,233 Americans missing in action
from the war that ended in 1975. On the Vietnamese side, 300,000
soldiers are still unaccounted for.

   For Mrs. Bernasconi and the veterans, the visit was a step toward
healing the anguish of Vietnam.

   As she left Mrs. Tien's home, she asked if she could have a photo
taken with her and her two sons. Mrs. Bernasconi held Mrs. Tien's hand.

   "Thank you for having us," she said.

===========================================

War wife's tribute
Sara Gist-Bernasconi's first husband went MIA in Vietnam. Her second was a
POW. These days, she honors both and the sacrifice of others through her
work at the New Mexico Veterans Memorial.

By Ollie Reed Jr.
Tribune Columnist
May 30, 2005

Sara Gist-Bernasconi trails her hand lightly, reverently, along the wall
listing the names of New Mexicans - mostly military but some civilians - who
have been prisoners of war or designated as missing in action.

There are 2,729 names engraved on tiles on a west-facing wall of the New
Mexico Veterans Memorial amphitheater, POWs and MIAs from World War I
through the war in Iraq. Most of the names - 2,622 - are from World War II.

"From here to here," Gist-Bernasconi says, walking swiftly as her hand
traces across the vast honor roll of World War II names. "When I first saw
the World War II list, it knocked me out."

Per capita, Gist-Bernasconi says, New Mexico had more residents serving in
World War II than any other state, and, per capita, New Mexico had a higher
casualty rate in that war than any other state.

"This is what we are all about," she says of the Veterans Memorial. "To make
people aware of the price of the freedoms we enjoy."

Earlier today, the Veterans Memorial, 1100 Louisiana Blvd. S.E., was the
site of Memorial Day ceremonies that included the dedication of
"Battlescape," a new sculpture by Jesus Moroles, and the reopening of the
memorial's visitors center, which has been closed for two years during an
expansion.

Gist-Bernasconi has been chairwoman of the New Mexico Veterans Memorial
Board for more than four years and is one of the memorial's most dedicated
volunteers. It's not unusual to find her putting in long hours seven days a
week at the 25-acre site.

Despite the amount of time she spends here, her eyes mist up as they sweep
around the grounds, taking in the flags snapping in the rude, spring wind;
the pink-tinged yellow roses in the Memorial Garden; the simple blocks of
stone in the area dedicated to fallen friends.

"This place has karma, heart and soul," she says as her gaze returns to the
wall honoring POWs and MIAs. There are 48 names on the section devoted to
the Vietnam War. Gist-Bernasconi is the widow of one of those - Tommy Gist -
and the wife of another - Louis Bernasconi. She knows about sacrifice.

The day was May 18, 1968, 37 years ago, but Gist-Bernasconi remembers it
vividly.

It was a Sunday morning, and she was at her home on Georgia Street
Southeast, just a few blocks west of where the Veterans Memorial is now. She
was getting her sons, Michael, 7, and Mark, 4, ready for church when she saw
the military staff car outside.

The young Air Force officer who came to the door said her husband, Capt.
Tommy Gist, a navigator on an RF4C reconnaissance jet, had been shot down
over North Vietnam and was missing.

Missing? She could understand dead. She could understand hurt? But she
couldn't quite grasp missing.

"I remember thinking, `Why don't they send someone to find him?' " she says.

Gist is still missing, although he has been legally declared dead. His widow
has gone to Vietnam twice - in 1989 and again in 1994 - hoping to find a
trace of him or news of him or at least some peace.

Tommy and Sara were high-school sweethearts in Pryor, Okla., a small town
that had Fourth of July parades when they were growing up there.

"He gave me his class ring when I was 15 years old," Gist-Bernasconi says.
"He went off to college, and I never dated anyone else after that."

She says Gist was a great father.

"He was one of the first dads to go into a delivery room," she says. "That's
not unusual now, but it was back then. He was the one to go with (Michael or
Mark's) class to the zoo."

All these years later, she still wears Gist's MIA bracelet.

Louis Bernasconi and Gist were friends. The two flew together and trained
together at Kirtland Air Force Base.

In 1972, before going to Vietnam for his third tour of duty there,
Bernasconi asked Sara if he could list her as the person to contact if
anything happened to him. She said sure.

In December 1972, the B-52 on which Lt. Col. Bernasconi was serving as
radar-navigator, was shot down over North Vietnam during a bombing raid.

Bernasconi and the rest of the crew survived. He was taken prisoner but
released by the North Vietnamese 90 days later.

Sara and Louis were married in 1975.

In her visit to Vietnam in 1994, Gist-Bernasconi found Louis' helmet in an
exhibit at the War Museum in Hanoi. She was not permitted to take it home
with her.

She has never found anything linked to Tommy Gist.

During that 1994 journey to Vietnam, however, she found a measure of peace
during a visit with a Hanoi woman whose husband, a North Vietnamese Army
captain, was reported missing and presumed dead in 1970.

Gist-Bernasconi asked the Vietnamese woman whether she was angry at the
United States. The woman said she was not angry, only sad.

"It was so clear to me at the time that governments make decisions that make
us enemies, but people are the same the world over," Gist-Bernasconi says.
"They love. They miss. They hurt."

Gist-Bernasconi has been active in the MIA movement since shortly after
Tommy Gist was shot down. To this day, she finds it impossible to turn down
requests to speak about the issue.

"I do not wish being an MIA wife on anybody," she says. "But the experience
really binds you. I've made incredible friends through the shared grief,
agony and the searching for answers.

"It has enriched my life, and I have found strengths I didn't know I had.
So, outside of losing my husband, it has not been a negative experience."

She devotes so much of her time to the Veterans Memorial for the same
reason, making something positive grow out of loss.

"I did not want to be a bitter, angry old lady," she says. "I want to honor
what Tom did and make it mean something, make people feel not so cavalier
about their freedoms.

"As an MIA wife, I have been to services all over the country, and there is
no place like our Veterans Memorial. It's a place of respect, serenity and
reflecting on the sacrifices of young men and women."

WORD FROM HOME

The New Mexico Veterans Memorial is looking for letters to and from veterans
away from home in time of war and peace to include it its new "Word From
Home" exhibit.

Letters will be accepted through Nov. 11, and selected letters will be
engraved on two walls at the memorial site.

The letters will be anonymous but should include rank, branch of service,
relation, date and, if relevant, war.

Those who are interested should send a copy of the original letter - with a
typed transcript, if possible - to:

Word From Home

New Mexico Veterans Memorial

P.O. Box 8389

Albuquerque, NM 87198-8389

A self-addressed, stamped envelope should be included with submissions for
those who want an original letter returned.

For information: Call 256-2042.