LEONARD, MARVIN MAURICE
Name: Marvin Maurice Leonard
Rank/Branch: W2/US Army
Unit: 159th Aviation Battalion, 101st Airborne Division
Date of Birth: 01 February 1936 (Detroit MI)
Home City of Record: Grand Rapids MI
Date of Loss: 15 February 1971
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 163836N 1062558E (XD528405)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 3
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: CH47C
Refno: 1703
Other Personnel In Incident: Donald E. Crone; Barry F. Fivelson; John L.
Powers; Willis C. Crear; James H. Taylor (all missing)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 September 1990 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 2002.
REMARKS: EXPLODE - NO SURV OBS AIR - J
SYNOPSIS: Lam Son 719 was a large-scale offensive against enemy
communications lines which was conducted in that part of Laos adjacent to
the two northern provinces of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese would
provide and command ground forces, while U.S. forces would furnish airlift
and supporting fire.
Phase I, renamed Operation Dewey Canyon II, involved an armored attack by
the U.S. from Vandegrift base camp toward Khe Sanh, while the ARVN moved
into position for the attack across the Laotian border. Phase II began with
an ARVN helicopter assault and armored brigade thrust along Route 9 into
Laos. ARVN ground troops were transported by American helicopters, while
U.S. Air Force provided cover strikes around the landing zones.
On February 15, 1971, during one of these maneuvers, a CH47 helicopter was
assigned the task of ferrying a load of gasoline into Savannakhet Province,
Laos. The crew of the aircraft consisted of SP4 Donald E. Crone, crew chief;
CWO Marvin M. Leonard, pilot; SP4 Willis C. Crear, door gunner; SP4 John L.
Powers, flight engineer; 2Lt. James H. Taylor, aircraft commander. WO Barry
F. Fivelson was a passenger onboard the aircraft.
During the mission, the aircraft was hit by enemy fire and began to lose
altitude. During the descent, the sling load apparently exploded, causing
the helicopter to explode, break into pieces, and crash. Observers later
said that the helicopter seemed disoriented and that it had overflown the
nearest friendly location by several miles and had descended in enemy-held
territory about 10 miles southeast of Sepone.
According to the U.S. Army, air searches conducted within minutes of the
crash revealed no sign of survivors. However, according to information given
to family members, the aerial search failed to find evidence of a crash. A
ground search was not possible because of hostile threat in the area. (Note
also that Defense Department data remarks indicates that a crash site was
found and that no survivors were observed from the air.)
The men aboard the CH47 were all classified Killed/Body Not Recovered. The
families maintain there is still a mystery surrounding the crash of the
aircraft, and they would like to know the whole truth.
Proof of the deaths of Powers, Fivelson, Taylor, Crear, Crone and Leonard
was never found. No remains came home; none was released from prison camp.
They were not blown up, nor did they sink to the bottom of the ocean.
Someone knows what happened to them.
The personnel aboard the CH47 are among nearly 600 Americans lost in Laos.
The communist Lao stated on several occasions that they held American
prisoners, but as the U.S. did not recognize the Pathet Lao as a legitimate
government, we never negotiated with them for their release. Consequently,
not one man held in Laos was ever released.
Were it not for thousands of reports relating to Americans still held
captive in Southeast Asia today, the families of the CH47 helicopter crew
might be able to believe their men died with their aircraft. But until proof
exists that they died, or they are brought home alive, they will wonder and
wait.
How long must they wait before we bring our men home?
=========================
Vietnam War chopper crash victims remembered; Michigan pilot's body missing
Saturday, March 2, 2002
By Mike Magner
Washington Bureau

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Back in 1970, the year before he became a casualty of the
Vietnam War, Marvin M. Leonard took his Michigan family to Arlington
National Cemetery to walk among the graves of America's heroes.
"He always wanted to be buried at Arlington," said Leonard's widow, Grand
Rapids native Doris Leonard-Scott. "Even if I don't ever see it, maybe my
children or their children will."
Leonard-Scott, her two daughters and her son saw the next best thing Friday,
as their late husband and father was memorialized at a burial service for
four men who died with Leonard and another still-missing Army officer when
their helicopter was downed in Laos on Feb. 15, 1971.
The bodies of Chief Warrant Officer Leonard, a 35-year-old Detroiter
piloting the Chinook helicopter on a supply mission into a firefight when it
exploded, and 2nd Lt. James H. Taylor, birthplace unknown, have not been
found.
Remains of the four others were recovered on a remote mountain in Laos in
1998. After a meticulous effort to identify the remains at an Army
laboratory in Hawaii, the four were finally laid to rest together with full
military honors on a beautiful, sunny morning.
All six names will be carved on the granite slab that will mark the grave:
Leonard; Taylor; Warrant Officer Barry F. Fivelson, of Evanston, Ill.; Spc.
Willis C. Crear, of Birmingham, Ala.; Spc. Donald E. Crone, of Dover, Ohio;
and Spc. John L. Powers, of Idaho Falls, Iowa. Below their names it will
simply state: "Downed Aircraft."
After a 20-minute chapel service, a flag-draped casket containing the
remains rolled through the cemetery on a caisson pulled by six brown horses,
three of them riderless.
"Today we have the privilege of honoring six heroes of our freedom who paid
the ultimate price," Army chaplain Maj. Claude Crisp told about 30 survivors
of the six men at the grave site, only a few hundred yards from the side of
the Pentagon that was hit by terrorists in September.
Seven members of the Third Infantry honor guard each fired three rifle shots
of salute, a lone trumpeter played "Taps" and the Army band played "America
the Beautiful."
Each of the men's closest relatives, including Leonard-Scott, then received
folded flags to remember their fallen loved ones.
The ceremony provided some sense of closure to Leonard's family, though it
wasn't complete.
"I feel we have a place to go now," said Leonard's daughter, Gayleen Leonard
of Big Rapids. "The Wall is not very intimate."
Leonard's name is carved on the Vietnam Wall that honors the 58,169 U.S.
military members killed in the war. Each of Leonard's family members had
gone there before to touch and trace his name, but never together as a
family -- until Friday afternoon.
"There will be more of a sense of closure for me when we can all go to The
Wall today," Doris Leonard-Scott said as the family prepared to make the
visit.
With Leonard-Scott, who now lives in Alto, N.M., were Gayleen; daughter
Tambria Leonard-Whitman of Lansing; son Mark; Leonard's closest cousin,
Brenda Nowack of Grand Rapids; and Leonard's oldest sister, Elsie
Chamberlain of Belleville.
All of them remembered Leonard as a fun-loving swashbuckler with undying
patriotism.
"We always wanted to bring him back," Gayleen Leonard said after the
service. "This was such a place of honor for him." She and her sister helped
the military find their father's crash site by digging through defense
archives for old war records.
Doris Leonard-Scott recalled her first meeting with Leonard on a blind date
to Lake Michigan that led to their 15-year marriage. "He looked at me and
said, 'You're going to be my wife,'" she said.
Suddenly she remembered something else. "It was on this date (March 1) in
1957 that Marvin and I had twins who died the same day," Leonard-Scott said.
"I'm not sure why, but it's all coming together."
=============================
The Grand Rapids Press
Friday, March 1, 2002
Lost pilot gets Arlington honors ; The Kentwood man was killed when his
helicopter was downed over Laos in 1971.
Ted Roelofs / The Grand Rapids Press
The final flight of Marvin Leonard is not yet home, but his family hopes for
one small measure of peace today at Arlington National Cemetery.
Thirty-one years after the lanky helicopter pilot from Kentwood flew his
last mission -- never to be seen again -- Kent County's last Vietnam-era MIA
was to be remembered today in the nation's capital.
There, the remains of four members of Leonard's crew -- discovered long
after their helicopter crashed in Laos in 1971 -- were to be interred during
an 11 a.m. burial and memorial service.
The remains of Leonard and the chopper's flight commander have never been
recovered, leaving an ache still there after 31 years for his widow and the
three children he left behind.
"My dad was extremely responsible," said his daughter, former Kentwood
resident Tambria Leonard-Whitman.
"I know he felt a great responsibility to his crew. I know this is what he
would want -- to know that they were returned."
Instead of burial, Marvin Leonard will be recognized with a granite marker
bearing his name and those of his crew and flight commander.
His family continues to pray that one day his remains will end up where they
belong.
"No matter how long it has been, it's still very fresh," said Leonard's
former wife, New Mexico resident Doris Scott, as she prepared in suburban
Washington for the ceremony. "There's never been any closure."
She was joined at the service by Leonard-Whitman and the couple's other two
children, Mark and Gayleen Leonard.
Tambria Leonard-Whitman recalls the day when she was 12 in her family's
mobile home in Kentwood, watching as two uniformed soldiers walked to the
door.
"My mother had always said if two men come to the door, it's not good news,"
said Leonard-Whitman, 43, who lives in Lansing.
For years after the war, Chief Warrant Officer Marvin Leonard, 35, was
listed as missing in action. But his status and that of most other MIAs was
later reclassified as "presumed killed" or "died while missing in action,
body not recovered."
On Feb. 15, 1971, Leonard volunteered to pilot his Chinook helicopter into
enemy territory to a fire base in Laos that needed fuel.
With the fuel suspended below in a sling, the Chinook apparently overran the
fire base.
According to an Army report, the sling load exploded, causing the helicopter
to split in two. The explosion was "believed to be the result of enemy
ground fire."
Witnesses said no one could have survived.
In 1988, a search and rescue team assigned to Southeast Asia searched the
crash site. They found nothing.
Still looking for answers, Leonard-Whitman and her sister dug through
Defense Department archives a few years later as they tried to piece
together a picture of their father's career.
Marvin Leonard joined the Army in 1953 at age 17, they knew. He met Doris
before that, when he went to trade school in Big Rapids to be a printer.
The family later settled in the Grand Rapids area and Leonard continued his
military career as the Vietnam War raged on.
While thousands protested the war, Leonard seemed to harbor no doubts about
his commitment to his nation.
Two weeks before he died, in his last letter home, he wrote: "I feel that we
are in Vietnam today so that my children and others can play in the school
yard in peace and see Old Glory fly."    Although he often was away from
home, Tambria Leonard-Whitman has an enduring image of her 6-foot-1 father,
a man with hazel eyes and black hair.
He was a man who loved his country, she said.
"He was perfect, of course. He was such a strong center of our lives. He was
extremely patriotic."
As they researched, Leonard-Whitman and her sister discovered a discrepancy
in the records. It appeared that the crash site coordinates were that of the
fire base and not where the Chinook had gone down.
"We found action reports, radio logs with coordinates on it. We realized
that they were different ones than in the file."
The pair crafted a report in 1994 and forwarded it to the Defense
Department, along with their belief the crash site was 15 kilometers from
where they searched.
The military sent another team to investigate and discovered the Chinook's
wreckage. They found the remains of the four crew members, but there was no
sign of Leonard or flight commander James H. Taylor. It took years to
identify the recovered remains.
Tambria Leonard-Whitman has another memory of her father.
She was a little girl and they went as a family to visit Arlington. They
walked along the rows of markers and she remembered that her father talked
about what this place meant.
"I remember him saying that if anything ever happened to him that he would
want his remains in Arlington."
As is the custom at Arlington, seven soldiers from the Third Infantry, clad
in their dress blues, were to fire off three volleys each in honor of those
who perished that day in Laos, east of Vietnam.
Each family will get an American flag in gratitude of their loved one's
sacrifice, followed by the playing of taps.
And Marvin Leonard's relatives will bow their heads and hope they can bring
him all the way back.
"After 30 years, there's not going to be a lot of him left, but if there's a
small part of him left, it should be in Arlington," Leonard- Whitman said.
"He symbolizes what this country is about. He symbolizes freedom."