Team AEDC holds event to remember POW and MIA mili-tary members

  • Published
  • By Raquel March
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, TENN. --  Team AEDC remembered military Prisoners of War and Missing in Action at the AEDC POW/MIA Remembrance Walk/Run and Burger Burn event held at AEDC Sept. 16.

The event, sponsored by the American Society of Military Comptrollers, was held as part of the national POW/MIA Recognition Day acknowledged on the third Friday of September.

During the Burger Burn, burgers and other food items were sold to raise funds. Donations are still being submitted and total funds will be donated to the National League of POW/MIA Families.

Jo Anne Shirley, sister to MIA U.S. Air Force Maj. Bobby Marvin Jones, M.D. and Charles W. (Bill) Burkart III, son of MIA U.S. Air Force Col. Charles W. Burkart Jr., were present to speak about their MIA family members during a ceremony before the walk/run.

Maj. Jones was a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon flying to DaNang, South Vietnam, Nov. 28, 1972. The aircraft disappeared from radar during flight and Jones was declared missing in action.

He is the only physician still missing from the Vietnam War.

Col. Burkart Jr. was a B-57 pilot. While flying over Laos June 13, 1966, on a night-strike mission with three other aircraft in a diamond formation, the pilots encountered severe storms. When the mission was aborted due to weather and they moved to clearer skies, Burkart's plane at the third ship position, right wing of the formation was no longer with the group. Burkart was declared missing on the mission date.

After numerous searches, Jones and Burkart have not been found.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has a mission "to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and the nations."

When American personnel remain captive, missing, or otherwise unaccounted-for at the conclusion of hostilities, the DOD accounting community becomes the responsible agent for determining the fate of the missing, and where possible, recovering them alive or recovering and identifying the remains of the dead.

For those killed-in-action, the accounting community is charged with locating, recovering and identifying their remains. More than 83,000 Americans remain missing from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Vietnam War.

Of the 1,973 missing personnel in the Vietnam War, 704 were repatriated and identified and 1,269 remain missing.

For more information on POW/MIA personnel visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil.