Closure after 32 years

Remains of local Vietnam vet finally identified, returned for proper burial.

BY JERRY DAVICH
Times Staff Writer

The name of Kenneth L. Crody is chiseled into Griffith's War Memorial as "missing in action" since 1972.

He's not missing anymore.

After 32 years buried under foreign soil, the U.S. Marine corporal's remains were excavated from South Vietnam on Aug. 29, 2000.

Crody's tiny, fragmented skeletal remains were finally identified April 23 of this year, along with remnants of some personal items -- his double-edge razor, nail clippers, part of a comb, part of his watch and a standard, military-issued fork and can opener.

And his dog tag. The only thing left intact.

The Griffith teenager was three weeks from his 19th birthday when he died.

'Don't worry, Mom'

On the morning of July 11, 1972, Crody was flying in a CH-53D helicopter carrying 50 South Vietnamese Marines, an American crew of five and a combat photographer.

The chopper was launched from the USS Tripoli, its mission to drop the Marines behind enemy lines near Communist-occupied Quang Tri City.

Crody, who enlisted at 17, served that day as the chopper's door gunner.

"Don't worry, Mom," he told his mother, Wilma Crody, weeks earlier. "Marines aren't ever sent into Vietnam. I'll be fine."

Those were his last words to her.

As the chopper approached the drop zone, still 100 feet above the ground, a heat-seeking SA-7 missile hit the aircraft's starboard engine. The missile's 5.5-pound warhead exploded engine turbine fragments into the passenger compartment.

Crody, along with another crewman, Marine Staff Sgt. Jerry W. Hendrix, died at the scene. A third Marine was rescued but died of his injuries a month later. Seven of the 50 Vietnamese Marines made it out alive.

Back in the states, Wilma Crody, driving to her job at Purdue University Calumet that day, clicked on the car radio and heard a special report: A U.S. helicopter was shot down by hostile gunfire in South Vietnam. Dozens of casualties. Crew presumed dead.

"Those poor guys," Wilma sighed to herself.

Later that day, two Marines walked up to Wilma at work. That's about all she remembers from that day. That's about all she cares to remember.

'I always had hope, but ... '

Shortly after Crody's death, the family held a memorial service for their "Kenny."

"We had to do something for him ... for me... for us," Wilma said. "It helped some."

A couple years later, Crody's father, Guy, lost his job at a local plant. Guy and Wilma, who came to Griffith in 1949, left the region to find work in Texas.

The years peeled away. Five, 10, 20. Then they moved back to Indiana, to downstate Linton, about 80 miles south of Indianapolis, to be near family.

The Marines sent occasional letters to the couple, informing them that efforts were being made to find their boy's body, along with 1,859 other MIAs from the Vietnam War.

In 2000, Crody's sister, Beverly O'Brien, was asked for a DNA sample by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a military and civilian group based at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. The high-tech group conducts recovery and forensic identification efforts of missing soldiers.

The family got its hopes up. But another year peeled away. And another and another.

"I always had hope, but ..." said O'Brien, who lives in Texas.

The last time she saw her brother was at her wedding, almost a year before his death. He assured her that he was being shipped to the Philippines, not Vietnam.

"He was only in Vietnam for a month before he was killed," O'Brien said.

A town kept the light on

Marthann Gatlin has lived in Griffith for 35 years. She's a member of the town's war memorial committee, which erected the Central Park War Memorial to honor local soldiers.

"I feel like I've come to know Ken Crody through the years," she said.

She never honestly believed his remains would be found, but she prayed for it each night, she said.

Delford Jones, chaplain for the Griffith VFW Post 9982, said he will have a hard time finding the words today to express how the town feels about Crody's homecoming. At 10 a.m., the VFW will honor Crody during its annual Memorial Day ceremony.

"To find a soldier's remains after all these years is so special," Jones said. "To know that soldier is from Griffith makes it so much more."

Wayne Govert, a Griffith businessman who knew Crody in high school, said, "This means so much to this town. Especially to the people who remember Kenny. He's finally coming home."

A joint burial

Five weeks ago, Crody's remains were identified, along with the remains of Hendrix, who was from Wichita, Kan. It turns out that DNA comparisons were not used in the "group identification," officials said.

Both Marines will share a joint burial this summer at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The soldiers' families are choosing a date.

"Families live for this day, for closure if nothing else," said Hattie Johnson, head of the Marines' POW/MIA Affairs Headquarters in Quantico, Va.

It was Johnson who visited Crody's parents last month at their Linton home to tell them the news in person.

In the past three years, Johnson has visited with seven families of soldiers whose remains were found. Everyone treated her like family, she said.

This summer, Crody's remains, escorted by a Marine, will be flown from Hickam Air Force Base to Arlington National Cemetery for a proper military burial.

"It will be so comforting to know our Kenny will be finally buried right," said Wilma, who's in poor health and unable to attend the burial in Virginia. "It's OK, I guess. At least I have his dog tag and his class ring."

Crody's sister, however, will attend with her family, including her first-born son. His name is Kenneth.

"I got pregnant right after my brother died. It just seemed right," O'Brien said.