HENDRIX, JERRY WAYNE
Remains returned, see below.
Name: Jerry Wayne Hendrix
Rank/Branch: E6/US Marine Corps
Unit: HMM 165, MAG 36, 1 MAW
Date of Birth: 27 December 1942
Home City of Record: Wichita KS
Date of Loss: 11 July 1972
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 163433N 1072250E (YD345644)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 4
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: CH53D
Refno: 1999
Other Personnel in Incident: Kenneth L. Crody (missing)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 March 1991 from one or more of
the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence
with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W.
NETWORK 2004.
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: On the morning of July 11, 1972, the helicopter to which Hendrix
was assigned launched from the USS TRIPOLI to participate in combat
operations in support of operation LAM SON 72 (Phase II) in Vietnam.
LAM SON 719 had been a large offensive operation against NVA communications
lines in Laos in the region adjacent to the two northern provinces of South
Vietnam. The operation was a raid in which ARVN troops drove west from Khe
Sanh on Route 9, cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, seized Tchepone, some 25 miles
away, and then returned to Vietnam. The ARVN provided and commanded the
ground forces, while U.S. Army and Air Force furnished aviation airlift and
supporting firepower.
Losses were heavy. The ARVN suffered some 9,000 casualties, almost 50% of
their force. U.S. forces incurred some 1,462 casualties. Aviation units lost
168 helicopters and another 618 were damaged. Fifty-five aircrewmen were
killed in action, 178 were wounded and 34 were missing in action. There were
19,360 known enemy casualties for the entire operation lasting until April
6, 1971.
Phase II of LAM SON included inserting South Vietnamese marines behind enemy
lines near communist-occupied Quang Tri City, Republic of Vietnam. This was
the mission of Hendrix' helicopter.
While approaching the drop zone, the helicopter was struck by a heat-seeking
SA-7 missile in the starboard engine. The aircraft immediately burst into
flames and crashlanded moments later. Several aboard received injuries and
were taken back to the TRIPOLI for treatment. The bodies of Hendrix and the
gunner, CPL Kenneth L. Crody, could not be recovered because of the intense
heat of the burning aircraft.
Crody and Hendrix are listed with honor among the missing because their
remains were not returned home. Witnesses believed they were both dead in
the aircraft. For many others of the missing, however, clear-cut answers
cannot be had. Many were alive and in radio contact with would-be rescuers
when they were last heard from. Others were photographed in captivity, only
to disappear.
Since the war ended, the Defense Department has received over 10,000 reports
relating to the men still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, yet concludes
that no actionable evidence has been received that would indicate Americans
are still alive in Southeast Asia. A recent Senate investigation indicates
that most of these reports were dismissed without just cause, and that there
is every indication that Americans remained in captivity far after the war
ended, and may be alive today.
It's time we learned the truth about our missing and brought them home.
===========================
National League of Families
POWMIA UPDATE
May 17, 2004
POW/MIAs - VIETNAM WAR: According to DoD, there are now 1,859 Americans
listed as missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War: 1,418 in
Vietnam, 378 in Laos, 55 in Cambodia and 8 in PRC territorial waters. Over
90% of all Americans missing from the Vietnam War were lost in Vietnam or in
areas of Laos and Cambodia under Hanoi's wartime control. Since the last
Newsletter, seven Americans have been announced as accounted for:
Warrant Officer 2nd Class Jack W. Brunson, USA, KIA/BNR, Laos, 5/31/71, RR
5/29/03
Major Ralph L. Carlock, USAF, KIA/BNR 3/4/67, LA, RR 10/26/02
CPL Kenneth L. Crody, USMC, KIA/BNR 7/11/72, SVN, RR 8/29/00
Mr. Charles Dean, Captured 9/10/74, LA, RR 11/26/03
SSGT Dennis W. Hammond, USMC, POW 2/8/68, DIC 1970, RR 1989
SSGT Jerry W. Hendrix, USMC, KIA/BNR 7/11/72, SVN, RR 8/29/00
Captain Raymond H. Hetrick, USAF, KIA/BNR 2/24/66, LA, RR 7/10/01
==================
Jerry W. Hendrix,U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. and Kansas MIA lost July
11, 1972 in northern Vietnam near Quang Tri during Operation Lam Son 72
(phase II). The CH53D helicopter to which he was assigned was to drop
ARVN troops behind enemy lines near Quang Tri. The helicopter was hit by
a heat seeking SA-7 missile and crashed. His body and the body of Cpl
Kenneth L. Crody could not be recovered because of the intense heat of
the burning aircraft. His remains were recovered in 2000, and were
identified and accepted by the family in April of 2004. The remains will
be buried at Arlington National cemetary July 27 along with Cpl. Crody.
A memorial service will be held July 31, 2004 at Resthaven Mortuary ,
Wichita, Kansas at 10:00AM. The address is 11800 West Kellogg.
Jim Deister, POW/MIA chair, Kansas State Council, Vietnam Veterans of
America.
Jim Deister
==========================
Posted on Sun, Jul. 25, 2004
A family's wait comes to an end
BY STAN FINGER
The Wichita Eagle
The Sea Stallion lifted off from the USS Tripoli on the morning of July 11,
1972. It was one of 34 Marine helicopters ordered to land 840 troops behind
enemy lines near Quang Tri City in Vietnam.
The CH-53D carried 50 Vietnamese Marines along with an American air crew, a
Marine combat photographer and two door gunners: Cpl. Kenneth Crody, 18, and
Staff Sgt. Jerry Wayne Hendrix, 29, just a few weeks short of finishing his
second tour of duty.
Hendrix had a wife and two small boys that he adored back in Wichita, along
with a mother who worried constantly.
But any time someone fretted over his safety, he'd tell them nothing was
going to happen.
"He thought he was invincible," his sister Paula said.
Jerry Wayne Hendrix loved a good fight.
Never mind that, at 5-foot-8 and no more than 150 pounds, he lost a lot of
them. He still liked to pick a fight with the biggest guy in the bar, come
home, get stitched up and go back for more.
He relished a good practical joke, and couldn't resist driving 100 mph in
whatever set of wheels he owned at the time -- a Mustang, a Jaguar, a yellow
Corvette convertible or a Javelin sports car.
He joined the Navy in 1960 after high school, but it was in the Marines that
he found a home. He enlisted in 1964 from the Navy Reserve and rose through
the ranks to become a staff sergeant -- the same rank his dad had achieved
in the Air Force.
"Going into the Marine Corps probably kept him out of jail," his oldest
sister, Paula Johnson, said with a chuckle.
It was always cause for a family celebration when he came home on leave.
He'd play pranks on his little sisters, tying the toes of their socks
together so they'd stumble around when they walked, or putting his youngest
sister, Patti, up in the closet for a game of hide-and-seek and then
"forgetting" about her.
"When Jerry was around his sisters, that's all that mattered -- that was
it," said Shelly Ramsey, one of his six sisters. "We were little princesses
to him."
He could always make them laugh.
"He did Donald Duck better than Donald Duck did," said Billie Jaso, another
sister.
He would take the younger siblings of his wife, Deborah, to the store and
show them how to open pop bottles with their teeth and dent vegetable cans
with his bare hands.
"He was a man's man," Deborah said. "I remember him holding his boys up and
saying, 'You are fighting Cossacks!' "
After his best friend died in a violent wreck, Jerry warned his wife that he
would probably die violently, too.
"It's either going to be a war or a car accident," he told her. "God's gonna
get his revenge because I was such a rotten little kid."
He had survived one tour of duty in Vietnam in the late '60s, then decided
to go back in 1971.
"We never asked why," Ramsey said. Being a Marine was his life.
The night before Jerry shipped back to Vietnam, he took his infant son,
Troy, and the stepson he was in the process of adopting, Tony, and carried
them out to the living room couch.
"I want you to always take care of your mom," he told them, "and I want you
to be good men like Dad."
Then he held them the rest of the night.
His mother was rarely at peace after he left. If a few weeks went by without
a letter or a phone call, she would be tracking down his officers to find
out why.
"She could be persistent," Johnson deadpanned.
So persistent, in fact, that there were times Jerry would be permitted to
talk with his family while he was on a mission. They'd be on a phone, and
he'd be on his walkie-talkie.
"We'd have to say, 'How are you doing? Over."I'm fine, how are you? Over,' "
Jaso said.
By the time the summer of 1972 rolled around, Jerry was just a few weeks
from coming home. Deborah and the boys moved to Wichita to be with Jerry's
family when he returned.
The day was getting so close, and yet his mother still worried.
As the helicopters neared their landing zone, they were greeted by intense
enemy fire from entrenched North Vietnamese forces.
A surface-to-air missile struck Hendrix's Sea Stallion when it was about 100
feet above the ground. Engine fragments exploded into the passenger
compartment, igniting fuel and ammunition. As the pilot brought the chopper
down in a controlled crash landing, the heat and fire set off a series of
explosions inside the fuselage.
The pilot, co-pilot and combat photographer escaped, and the crew chief was
pulled from the wreckage, his clothes aflame.
All but seven of the Vietnamese soldiers died in the crash. Those who
survived made their way back to friendly forces. The Americans waited in a
nearby bomb crater, watching silently as North Vietnamese soldiers sifted
through the charred remains of the helicopter. They would be found later
that night by a rescue team and returned to the Tripoli. The crew chief,
Staff Sgt. Clyde Nelson, would die a month later from his wounds.
No one saw Crody and Hendrix again.
The men in dress blues visited the house on West 29th Street a couple of
days later.
"Those people walking up to your door -- oh, my God, your heart stops," said
Ramsey, who was 10 then. "It's a horrible, horrible feeling."
The officers told the family that Staff Sgt. Hendrix's helicopter had gone
down in flames after being hit by enemy fire, and that he was presumed dead.
Jerry's mother calmly asked a few questions, but no one broke down until the
officers had gone.
"It was just total disbelief and shock on everyone's faces," Ramsey said.
Deborah began screaming and rocking back and forth.
"I've lost my first child," Jerry's mother said to no one in particular.
"I've lost my only son."
And then she became hysterical.
A memorial service was held on July 27, 1972, at McConnell Air Force Base.
But Jerry's body and dog tags had not been found. His death could not be
confirmed.
His mother held onto the hope that somehow he had survived the crash and was
still alive. His family put on prisoner-of-war-missing-in-action bracelets
and tried to get on with their lives.
But the questions nagged at them.
Is he dead? Is he a POW? Is he still over there somewhere?
"The thoughts that went through our minds all of these years..." Ramsey
said, her voice trailing off.
July 11 became a dreaded day on the family calendar.
"Lots of crying goes on in my family on that day," Ramsey said.
Jerry's son and stepson, Troy and Tony, grew up without him.
"It feels very strange," Troy said. "I've had a lot of weird emotions. All
you have is stories -- you don't have any memory."
Troy is 6-foot-2 and weighs well over 200 pounds, but he looks and acts so
much like the father he never knew "it's eerie," Ramsey said.
Just like his stepfather, Tony went into the Marines. He researched Jerry
Hendrix's final mission, and carries the vital statistics in his wallet.
"I went in right when the first Gulf War broke out," he said. "That tore my
mom up, but I just felt like that's something I had to do."
The war ended before he was shipped overseas. He spent more than 10 years in
the Marines and hoped to become a staff sergeant -- just like his stepfather
-- when he injured his neck and shoulder lifting weights and had to accept a
medical discharge.
"From everyone that I talked to, he did love his boys," Tony said. "We were
his pride and joy. We were everything to him.
"It makes me feel good. I know that he loved us. I think we would have had a
better life growing up had he come home."
Jerry's father died in 1995 without ever knowing for sure that his son was
gone.
"We buried him with his POW-MIA bracelet on," said Patti Bush, one of his
daughters.
One day in 2000, Paula Johnson received a letter from the military, asking
her to call. Human remains had been found, and the military had reason to
believe they might be Hendrix and Crody.
The letter and phone call hit family members like a left hook.
"It was almost like a call saying that he was dead," Ramsey said.
It snuffed lingering hopes that, somehow, somewhere, he was still alive.
Family members provided DNA samples, but a match couldn't be made. One year
passed, and then 9/11 brought identification efforts to a standstill.
Jerry's mother became gravely ill, and his sisters pressed the military for
answers. She died last year before confirmation came.
"We figure she found out before we did," Ramsey said.
This spring, officers in dress blues paid another visit to the Hendrix
family. The officers told family members that an exact match was not
possible because the human remains were so badly burned that DNA could not
be extracted. The skeletons had been fused together by the intense heat of
the burning helicopter.
But the remains contained the left femurs of two Caucasian males -- and the
only two Caucasian males who did not emerge from the crash were Cpl. Kenneth
Crody and Staff Sgt. Jerry Hendrix.
Personal items and dog tags belonging to Crody were found nearby. Together,
those things were enough to convince authorities that the remains belonged
to Crody and Hendrix.
They will be buried together with full military honors at Arlington National
Cemetery at 3 p.m. Tuesday -- 32 years to the day after the memorial service
for Hendrix at McConnell Air Force Base.
The crowd will include all but one of Hendrix's sisters, his widow, his two
sons and his two grandchildren.
A local memorial service for Hendrix will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at
Resthaven Mortuary.
"It is final, and that's a good thing," Ramsey said. "You've got to have
that closure. To just sit and continue to wonder and wonder and wonder..."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reach Stan Finger at 268-6437 or sfinger@wichitaeagle.com.