PARRISH, FRANK COLLINS Remains Returned (see text) Identified 01/02/1990
Name: Frank Collins Parrish Rank/Branch: E7/US Army Special Forces Unit: Company D, Detachment A-411, 5th SFG Date of Birth: 19 September 1931 (Big Springs TX) Home City of Record: Cleburne TX Date of Loss: 16 January 1968 Country of Loss: South Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 102755N 1060838E (XS252570) Status (in 1973): Missing In Action Category: 1 Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground Refno: 0990
Other Personnel In Incident: Earl R. Biggs (remains returned)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 April 1990 with the assistance of 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: ARVN ADV - UNIT AMBUSHED
SYNOPSIS: On January 16, 1968, SFC Earl Biggs and SFC Frank Parrish were serving as advisors to a Vietnamese strike force. That morning, they departed with a camp strike force company from Phuoc Tay on a search operation extending east of the camp. At 1215 hours, about 16 miles northwest of My Tho, Vietnam, the strike force was ambushed by Vietnamese communists. Later that afternoon, two companies were inserted into the same area to look for survivors.
Search efforts were continued until January 18 without the recovery of Biggs or Parrish. CIDG and LLDB survivors reported that the Viet Cong captured and summarily executed both Biggs and Parrish. Both men were classified Missing in Action. The Defense Intelligence Agency further expanded the classification to include an enemy knowledge ranking of 1. Category 1 indicates "confirmed knowledge" and includes all personnel who were identified by the enemy by name, identified by reliable information received from escapees or releasees, reported by highly reliable intelligence sources, or identified through analysis of all-source intelligence.
On January 17, 1972, remains were reported in the vicinity of the action which were determined to be those of SFC Parrish. These remains were recovered and identified in June, 1973 and returned to Parrish's family for burial. Parrish's brother, Johnnie, thought the forensic evidence was inadequate.
Government forensics experts had based their identification of Sgt. Parrish on three pieces of evidence: (1) the remains had been found near where St. Parrish had been ambushed; (2) photographs of Parrish supposedly corresponded with x-rays of the skull, even though the skull had neither jawbone nor teeth; and (3) medical equipment like that which Sgt. Parrish carried was found near the ambush site.
The Pentagon informed Johnnie Parrish that he could accept it or reject it, but the identification was final. It was "concrete proof." Parrish's parents accepted the identification, and eventually, Johnnie Parrish did also, however reluctantly.
After American involvement in Indochina ended in 1975, reports relating to Americans missing in Southeast Asia began to be received by the U.S. Government. There have been reports of other remains having been exhumed by local farmers, but no confirmation has been possible of their identity. These reports have been tentatively correlated to several cases of missing Americans.
On Friday, December 29, 1989, members of Frank Parrish's family met with government officials (a military man named Cole and a civilian named Manning) who explained that an error had been made in 1973. Newly recovered remains returned by the Vietnamese to U.S. control had been positively identified as those of Frank Parrish. At the same time, the remains of Parrish's partner, SFC Earl R. Biggs, had been recovered and identified. The family was shown new forensic data, including dental records. This time, Johnnie Parrish felt assured that the identification had been accurately made. The officials explained that a meeting would be held in Washington the following Tuesday, following the holiday weekend, to record the family's acceptance of the new remains identification and to establish a timetable for exchanging the remains. Johnnie Parrish requested that he be kept fully informed, and was assured that he would be.
On Saturday, December 30, John Parrish drove from his home in Joshua, Texas to the Rose Hill Cemetery in Cleburn to visit his brother's grave. He photographed the grave.
On New Year's Day, 1990, John Parrish again drove from his home to Rose Hill Cemetery for a funeral ceremony for an old friend. After the ceremony, Parrish decided to again visit the gravesite of his younger brother. What he found there shocked and angered him. His brother's grave had been opened and the remains removed. He had not been informed.
Parrish immediately drove to the Crusier-Pearson-Mayfield Funeral Home and was told that the grave had been opened because they had needed to prepare the gravesite for his brother's body, which would be buried at 1:00 the following day. Parrish was once again shocked and angered that he had not been told.
January 2, 1990, on the day of the supposed meeting to determine a timetable for exchange of remains, Frank Parrish was buried in his home state of Texas. On January 3, 1990, the U.S. announced that remains returned by the Vietnamese during 1989 had been positively identified as being those of SFC Earl R. Biggs. No public mention was made of the newly-identified remains of Frank Parrish.
Further investigation revealed that neither the U.S. Government nor the funeral home had obtained proper exhumation and transportation permits to remove and transport the remains from Frank Parrish's grave. Over a holiday weekend, the government had secretly and illegally removed the body, and had not notified the family as promised. Had John Parrish not investigated, Frank Parrish might have been buried without his family present. Critics began using terms like "grave-robbing" in relation to the Parrish case.
In the Parrish case, the 1973 identification was hastily and incorrectly made. Other similar cases support criticism that the U.S. Government is making positive identifications, sometimes upon the flimsiest of evidence, in order to more quickly resolve the issue of the more than 2300 Americans missing in Southeast Asia. In this case, the family was further grieved by the inept conduct of the government in notifying them of the exchange and burial schedule.
Of the greatest concern, however, is the fact that, for 17 years, the U.S. Government had considered Frank Parrish "accounted for." Therefore, even if a first-hand live sighting report had been received that Parrish was alive, it would have been discredited on the basis that he was dead. The government had "concrete proof."
Tragically, reports of Americans still held in captivity continue to flow into the U.S. intelligence community. Many officials who have seen these largely classified reports are convinced that hundreds of Americans are still alive in Southeast Asia, still prisoners of a war that most Americans would like to put behind them.
Many fear the books are being closed on Americans who are alive. If so, what would they think of us for allowing it to happen? How many would serve the next time their country called them if they knew they could be abandoned?
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U.S. Government Caught Robbing Grave of Vietnam Veteran to Hide Its Mistake in Identification of Remains
For U.S. Veteran News and Report, March 1990 By Paul Warren
Johnnie Parrish always wondered whether that was really his brother, Army Master Sgt. Frank C. Parrish, buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Cleburne, Texas.
When the Army returned Sgt. Parrish's remains for burial in May, 1973, more than five years after he was reported captured in a Viet Cong ambush and summarily executed, Johnnie Parrish thought the forensic evidence a bit flimsy.
The forensic "experts" had based their identification of Sgt. Parrish on three pieces of evidence: (1) the remains had been found near where Sgt. Parrish and his Vietnamese strike force had been ambushed; (2) photographs of Sgt. Parrish supposedly corresponded with X-rays of the skull, even though the skull had neither jawbone nor teeth; and medical equipment like that which Sgt. Parrish carried was found near the ambush site. "But my mother and dad and everybody else accepted," Johnnie Parrish told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Eventually, Johnnie Parrish also accepted it, however reluctantly. "The thing that hurt me is that in 1973, the Pentagon said to me, `You can accept or reject it, but this is final. This is concrete proof,' and I didn't like the attitude," Johnnie Parrish said.
Then, in early January this year, Johnnie Parrish drove from his home in Joshua, Texas, to the Rose Hill Cemetery to attend a funeral ceremony for an old friend. After the ceremony, Parrish decided to visit the grave of his younger brother. What Johnnie Parrish discovered at his brother's gravesite shocked and angered him. His brother's grave had been opened and the remains removed.
Johnnie Parrish had accidentally stumbled onto a government-endorsed grave robbery. The U.S. government was trying to hide a mistake it made 17 years earlier when it incorrectly identified the remains of Sgt. Parrish. They were trying to hide it from the Parrish family and hide it from the public. Without the proper permits, without telling anyone in the family, the government had come in and robbed Sgt. Parrish's grave and sent the remains to Hawaii. "Man, I am as mad as a wet toad," Johnnie Parrish said after viewing the desecrated grave, chastizing employees at the Crusier-Pearson-Mayfield Funeral Home in Cleburne, which handled Sgt. Parrish's burial and the exhumation of the remains.
Johnnie Parrish had been warned by the funeral home in December, 1989, that the government may have made a mistake in identifying his brother's remains. Parrish requested that he be kept informed of the progress of the case and was promised by funeral home employees and an unidentified government official that he would be. But the next thing Johnnie Parrish heard about his brother's case was when he looked into the empty grave.
The government began furiously backpedaling on the Parrish case when a Pentagon informant leaked information to the U.S. Veteran News and Report about the mixup of remains and subsequent attempts to cover up the mistake through grave robbery. According to information obtained by U.S. Veteran News and Report, the U.S. government obtained neither the permit required for exhumation of the remains originally believed to be those of Sgt. Parrish nor the permit necessary for transportation of the remains. "The Army is under the impression that all necessary state requirements would be met by the funeral home," said Major Lois Faires, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon. Officials at the Crusier-Pearson-Mayfield Funeral Home refused to comment on the case.
But Johnson County Clerk Robby Goodnight confirmed that neither the exhumation permit nor the transportation permit had been obtained. Faires said the mixup in remains was unusual. "This is extremely rare that something of this nature occurred," she said. Faires told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she knew of only one other case in which the wrong remains had been sent for burial.
But Ted Sampley, chairman of Homecoming II, said he knows of at least 10 cases in which it has been proven that the wrong remains were sent for burial. "And we don't know how many they have managed to hide," said Sampley.
Perhaps the most infamous case of an incorrect burial involves Marine Sgt. Ronald Ridgeway, one of nine Marines the government thought it had buried in a mass grave in St. Louis in 1968.
Ridgeway was a member of Company B, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, stationed at Khe Sanh on Feb. 25, 1968, when his unit was ambushed by North Vietnamese regulars while on patrol just outside the base. Although the ambush site was within view of the base, Ridgeway's unit was pinned down by heavy fire and attempts to reinforce it were driven back by the NVA. When the Marine units finally were able to break contact and return to base, they had to leave their dead behind. It was several days before the Marines could attempt to recover their dead because of heavy enemy activity.
When they were finally able to get into the area, the Marines found that repeated harassment and interdiction fires had badly scrambled the remains of their fellow Marines. They recovered what they thought were the remains of nine dead Marines, none of whom could be individually identified.
Among them, according to the government forensic experts, was Ridgeway. Those sets of remains were combined with the remains of nine Navy men who had died in a separate incident and were interred in a mass grave in St. Louis. But, on Jan. 28, 1973, nearly five years after he supposedly was buried, Ridgeway was repatriated from a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.
Ridgeway had come back from the dead, much to the chagrin of the U.S. government. Although the relatives of seven of those Marines believed buried in St. Louis found little hope in Ridgeway's return, the wife of one of them, Ruth Brellenthin, thought it entirely possible that her husband, Lance Corporal Michael Brellenthin, might have escaped with Ridgeway.
For five years the government refused to give Mrs. Brellenthin information about Ridgeway's whereabouts so she could question him about the incident. When she finally found him on her own, it was 1978, 10 years after the ambush. Ridgeway told her he had not seen Michael Brellenthin during or after the ambush. But an intelligence report obtained by Mrs. Brellenthin indicated that in late February, 1968, approximately 20-30 U.S. POWs were sighted near Khe Sanh.
According to the report: "Source observed several of the PWs wearing `strange caps.' He described this cap as olive drab in color and made of cloth. Caps described resemble the USMC fatigue cap." Yet, the U.S. government continued to state unequivocally that LCpl. Michael Brellenthin had been killed in action because Ruth Brellenthin could not prove otherwise.
Although the government lacked evidence that Michael Brellenthin was dead, its assumption that he was dead outweighed Mrs. Brellenthin's assumption that he might be alive. "The attitude of the government on these cases," said Sampley, "is that if you can't prove that the remains are not of a particular individual, then they must belong to the individual the government says they belong to."
Even if individuals are able to prove that remains can not be positively identified as belonging to a specific person, the government will not accept that as proof. The only opinion it values in forensic cases is its own.
The case of Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Hart is a specific example of this. Hart's AC-130 aircraft was shot down in Laos in 1972 with 16 crew members aboard. In 1985, the government told his wife, Anne Hart, that it had found her husband's remains during a crash site excavation in which she had participated.
Mrs. Hart was immediately skeptical, especially when the government said it had identified 13 of the 16 crewmen. Mrs. Hart decided to have her own analysis done on the seven tiny fragments of bone, which could be held in one hand, the government said constituted the remains of her husband.
Dr. Michael Charney of Colorado State University, who has nearly 50 years of experience in anthropology, analyzed the bone fragments. "It is impossible," Charney wrote in his report, "to determine whether these fragments are from LTC Hart or any other individual, whether they are from one individual or several, or whether they are even from any of the crew members of the aircraft in question."
Mrs. Hart refused to accept the remains and sued the government, challenging its identification procedures. Mrs. Hart's challenge produced additional criticism of the Army's Central Identification Laboratory (CIL) in Hawaii and the the techniques it uses in identifying remains.
Some scientists, including Charney, charged that CIL deliberately misinterpreted evidence in order to identify remains. They said that the Army consistently drew unwarranted conclusions about height, weight, sex and age from tiny bone fragments. "These are conclusions just totally beyond the means of normal identification, our normal limits and even our abnormal limits," said Dr. William Maples, curator of physical anthropology at Florida State Museum.
Among the egregious errors cited by Charney was a piece of a pelvic bone that the laboratory mistakenly said was part of a skull bone and was used to identify Chief Master Sgt. James Ray Fuller, who was on the same AC-130 aircraft as Hart. Procedures at CIL were revamped shortly after that, but there continues to be concern about the accuracy of its work.
There are recurring charges that the U.S. government, in an effort hastily account for as many missing men as possible, is stretching the bounds of credibility when it comes to identifying remains.
One such case involves Sgt. Richard Fitts. Fitts was a passenger on a Vietnamese Air Force CH-34 helicopter near Tchepone, Laos, on Nov. 30, 1968.
The crew of the helicopter was Vietnamese. The American passengers were part of a team assigned to Command and Control North, MACV-SOG, U.S. Army Special Forces. The mission was classified then and remains classified.
Other Americans aboard the aircraft included Sgt. Arthur E. Bader, Cpl. Gary R. LaBohn, SSgt. Klaus D. Scholz, Major Samuel K. Toomey, Cpl. Michael H. Mein and 1st Lt. Raymond C. Stacks.
The helicopter was hit by 37mm anti-aircraft fire and crashed in flames near a stream in heavy jungle. No ground search was initiated because it was in a denied area. No survivors were seen.
In March, 1988, the crash site was excavated by a joint Lao/U.S. technical team and human remains consisting of 17 teeth and 145 bone fragments, none measuring over two inches, were recovered.
On Jan. 3, 1990, the U.S. government announced that the remains of Fitts had been identified and returned to his parents. That identification was determined by the government's conclusion that two of the 17 teeth belonged to Fitts. They were buried in a separate casket in Boston, Mass.
The remaining 15 teeth and 145 bone fragments were said to be unidentifiable. But on Feb. 8, 1990, the Pentagon announced the remaining Americans had been identified and would be buried, along with the Vietnamese crew, in a mass grave in Arlington, Va.
Fitts' name was included on that tombstone along with the other Americans because the Pentagon believed some of the bone fragments belonged to Fitts. "What it amounts to is a mass burial, sort of like what Stalin did," said Sampley. "If you can't prove it's a particular individual, just say the remains are unidentified. Don't just stick a name on it."
But that's exactly what the government did in the case of Master Sgt. Frank Parrish in 1973. According to Faires, it was decided that the remains belonged to Parrish because they were of a Caucasian of about the same age and medical equipment was found nearby. "There was nothing forensically (proving) it wasn't Parrish," said Faires.
Parrish had been accompanied on the fatal patrol by another Special Forces team member, Sgt. 1st Class Earl R. Biggs. The Pentagon says his remains were returned earlier. But the family of Sgt. Biggs must now be wondering, just as Johnnie Parrish wondered 17 years ago about his brother Frank, whether it was actually Sgt. Biggs it buried.
As for the remains that were interred in Sgt. Parrish's grave, what little is known about them, according to government documents, is that they belonged to an individual who was held prisoner for several years before being executed.
Was that Biggs? Was it Parrish? Or, was it one of the more than 2,000 men still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia?
The government says it doesn't know and has sent the remains back to Hawaii for further identification. Who knows what unsuspecting family they will be sent to next for burial?
Sgt. Frank Parrish was buried for the second time in Rose Hill Cemetery in January, 1990 in a simple ceremony. There was no honor guard this time to salute him, no grieving widow to accept the flag that covered the coffin.
The Army says Sgt. Parrish's widow, who has since remarried, refuses to comment on the mixup, but that is an excuse the government conveniently hides behind when it is trying to avoid publicity about an embarrassing incident.
The families of Biggs and Parrish bore their grief 17 years ago when they were told their men had died. Now, that grief has been compounded by inexcusable Army inefficiency.
The families will forever be burdened with the question of whether or not the remains they buried actually were those of their loved ones. Paul Warren is a veteran journalist who has covered the POW/MIA issue extensively.
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The Jersey Journal Top News
HE'S 'AWOL' NO LONGER
Army now admits decades-old error Hudson GI will get burial with honors
Saturday, March 06, 2004
By Ken Thorbourne Journal staff writer
It's been nearly four decades since Army Spc. 4th Class Carl Wadleigh of Jersey City went missing during the war in Vietnam.
Unlike other soldiers in his company, judged to have fought bravely and died for their country, the former student of Jefferson Elementary School in North Bergen - his twin sister, Margaret, likens him to Matt Dillon, the handsome sheriff on TV's "Gunsmoke" - was branded a deserter.
After 36 years of living with this cloud hanging over their brother's reputation and military career and their family's name, Wadleigh's six surviving siblings were told last month that the Army had it wrong all along. Military brass now believe that in 1968 Wadleigh, then 21, died fighting on behalf of his country in Vietnam's Ben Tre province.
DNA tests have definitively proved, Army officials now say, that Wadleigh's remains had been confused with those of another soldier, Master Sgt. Frank Parrish, and were buried in Texas in 1973.
In a stark reversal, the Army now says Wadleigh is entitled to a full military funeral, and family members are planning for a burial in May at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Just beginning to digest the Army's revised determination on their brother's disappearance, Wadleigh's siblings say they feel a sense of closure and vindication, but also anger and bewilderment that the government could get things so wrong for so long.
"I was shocked. I was glad it ended," said older brother Clifford Wadleigh Jr. of Jersey City, an ex-Navy medic who enlisted shortly before Carl was drafted in 1964. "It just felt like part of you was missing."
Carl's parents - Clifford Sr. and Mary - died in the 1980s without that closure. All they knew of their son's last days was what they had heard from FBI agents who visited them inquiring about their youngest son's whereabouts. They said that Carl had gone AWOL - Absent Without Leave.
"We all thought he was AWOL," said Michelle Wadleigh, another of Carl's sisters, a religious science teacher who lives in Florham Park. "That was the hard part. There was an absolute stigma."
Mistaken identity
The Army's reappraisal of Carl Wadleigh's status as a soldier began in 1989 when the Vietnamese government shipped boxes containing the remains of 21 U.S. soldiers to the United States, according to Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, a spokesman for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii.
With the emergence of mitochondrial DNA as an unassailable tool for identifying remains, military forensic experts were able to definitively identify one set of these remains as Master Sgt. Frank Parrish. The discovery was shocking because military officials were convinced they had already recovered and buried Parrish's remains.
Parrish, who worked as an adviser to a South Vietnamese strike force, was believed to have been the soldier found in 1972 alongside the body of Master Sgt. Earl Briggs, according to an account compiled in 1990 by the Homecoming II Project, an advocacy group for families of missing soldiers. Both men were killed in an ambush on Jan. 16, 1968.
Military officials had based their identification of the remains on a comparison done with Parrish's picture and a toothless and jawbone-less skull.
There also was circumstantial evidence, said 1st Lt. Ken Hall, who works with O'Hara. Parrish was a medic, and a set of forceps had been found near the remains, he said.
Parrish's brother Johnnie had long rejected the forensic evidence the government had used to identify his brother, the Homecoming II report stated.
"The Pentagon informed Johnnie Parrish that he could accept it or reject it, but the identification was final," the account states, noting that Parrish's parents accepted the determination and eventually a reluctant Johnnie Parrish did, too.
As it turns out, Johnnie Parrish was right; the government was wrong.
In Parrish's grave
The definitive identification of Parrish in 1989 set in motion a series of events, beginning with the exhumation of the remains in the Texas grave. Then came the time-consuming process of figuring out who that man was.
"We went back to Ben Tre," the province where the remains initially believed to be Parrish had been found, O'Hara said.
"We also deduced who the person could be by process of elimination. Who was in the area? . It takes an awfully long time."
It was November 2001 before military officials contacted two of Carl Wadleigh's six siblings in New Jersey, asking for blood samples that could be used to compare DNA patterns with the remains unearthed in Texas.
Just last month, Army officials contacted family members and confirmed that the remains that had been buried in Texas were those of their brother Carl.
In a Feb. 18 meeting with family members in the Branchville home of eldest sibling Maryjane, Army officials said they still believe Carl went AWOL, but not for as long as originally thought. Rather, they think he went AWOL for 13 days, having run off with a Vietnamese girlfriend.
Sent to a hospital near Saigon to undergo a procedure in 1968, Carl never showed up, Army officials said, according to Carl's siblings.
Army officials failed to return dozens of calls seeking verification of this account, which four siblings said they took away from the meeting.
Family members acknowledge that Carl had sent pictures home of a French Vietnamese woman he claimed to have married. Once, they said, he asked family members to raise $1,000 so he could send her to the United States.
Army officials told the family they now believe Carl returned to active duty sometime after his unexcused absence. He died fighting for his country, they said, and is entitled to a full military funeral, according to family members.
"He died a hero," Michelle Wadleigh said.
Family memories
Mary and Clifford Wadleigh Sr. began their family in Jersey City in the early 1930s, with the birth of Maryjane. In 1945, the family moved to North Bergen, where Carl and Margaret were born on Dec. 20, 1946.
Without elaborating, Margaret, who now lives in Black Hawk, S.D., said family life was not happy, recalling that as kids she and Carl ran away from home. Carrying two bananas for sustenance, they got as far as a carnival park in Bayonne before tossing in the towel, Margaret remembered.
"We called home and my mom said we could take the rest of the day off" from school, Margaret recalled.
Clifford Jr. remembers swinging on trees in the hills of North Bergen with his younger brother.
Once, when a branch snapped, Clifford Jr. remembers shoving Carl out of harm's way, sparing him a steep fall.
"We were very close," Clifford said. "I saved his life once or twice as kids."
Carl never attended high school, family members said, and was living with relatives in Jersey City when he was drafted in 1964. He was shipped out to Vietnam in 1965.
The last family member to see Carl alive was first cousin Kenneth Wadleigh, a lifelong Jersey City resident who served with Carl in the Army's Ninth Infantry Division. Kenneth, now a supermarket manager in Fort Lee who remembers Carl as outgoing and interested in wrestling, said he never believed Carl went AWOL.
One reason for Kenneth's staunch belief is that he visited Carl in 1967 at a hospital near Saigon where Carl underwent treatment for a hernia he developed from carrying heavy artillery.
It not clear whether this is same hospital visit Army officials were referring to when they said Carl never showed up for an appointment in 1968. Kenneth is sure of the year, because it was the same year he finished his tour of duty and it was shortly after the visit that he heard family members mention that his cousin had gone AWOL.
"I would never believe it," Kenneth said. "I sat and talked to him for three hours, and that was the furthest thing from his mind. He wanted to do his job and go home."
Kenneth's theory on what happened to his cousin: "After he was discharged (from the hospital), I think he hitched a ride on a truck and (I believe) the truck was ambushed. . He was found right outside of base camp."
A soldier's reputation
Carl's service was also remembered positively by his fellow soldiers, according to Michelle Wadleigh, who attended a reunion of her brother's platoon five years ago.
"My brother had quite a reputation for being an incredible soldier," she said. "He carried heavy artillery rifles. . I know he didn't like it. I remember the letters, but I know he did what he had to do."
In the years since the Army classified Wadleigh as AWOL, the family's trials were more than emotional, they said.
Clifford Jr., who works as a security officer at City Hall, lost several jobs because of suspicions raised by federal agents visiting his workplace, mistaking him for his younger brother, he said.
And while Margaret is grateful for the sense of closure the identification of her brother's remains has brought, she isn't prepared to forgive the military its errors.
"I'm totally disappointed in the government," Margaret said. "Not knowing if he was dead or alive and finding him in someone else's grave. . It does give it some closure, but I am totally disappointed by the whole thing."
Clifford Jr., who spent his Navy years stateside, said he's come to peace with the Army's performance concerning his brother.
"They put us through a lot of hell saying this and that," he said. "But after 30 years they found my brother. They did their job."
Overdue honor
With the history of their brother's service now officially rewritten, the kind of personal praise Michelle received about her brother from his fellow soldiers can now be bestowed publicly.
This Memorial Day, Jaime Vazquez, Jersey City's director of Veteran Affairs, plans to attach Carl Wadleigh's name to the Vietnam memorial rock in Pershing Field that honors city residents killed in action.
Wadleigh's will be the 68th name affixed to the rock, Vazquez said.
Michelle Wadleigh also wants her brother's name placed on the Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
"He served with dignity," she said. "He deserves to be there."