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The
Detroit News
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
These medals reflect the military history of Teran, who was
killed in 1970 while guarding an ammunition dump in Quang Tri
Province.
MIA's body returned home after 32 years
Jennifer Brooks
WESTLAND -- Thirty-two years after he vanished in the jungles of
Vietnam, Refugio Thomas Teran is coming home. Home to the
parents who never stopped waiting and hoping, home to the
friends who never forgot the handsome boy with the generous
heart. Home to a hero's burial, with full military honors,
in Arlington National Cemetery. "I was praying for
this, and I just thank my God for giving me this gift,"
said his mother, Anna Bertha Teran, 76, as she sat in her
Westland home, surrounded by pictures of her lost son. "I
only wish I could share what I'm feeling with all the other
families who are still waiting." The recovery and
identification of Tom Teran -- last seen in the middle of a
fierce firefight in the predawn hours of May 6, 1970 as Viet
Cong forces overran the munitions dump he was guarding on
Henderson Hill, Quang Tri Province -- brings the number of U.S.
servicemen still missing in Southeast Asia to 1,932.
Teran is the first Michigan MIA to come home since construction
began on the new Vietnam memorial in Lansing. His return leaves
60 names among the missing. "Every one of those names
is a story. Every one of them is just so important to us,"
said Marty Eddy, president of the Prisoners of War Committee of
Michigan.
The U.S. government spends $55 million a year in an effort to
retrieve the lost casualties of the Second World War, Korea,
Vietnam, the Gulf War and assorted Cold War skirmishes -- 88,000
missing servicemen in all.
Since the United States and Vietnam restored diplomatic ties in
1992, the Defense Department has deployed 69 search teams to
Southeast Asia, excavating crash sites and battlefields,
interviewing aging civilians and soldiers, tracking rumors of
unreturned prisoners of war. "Our boy is found. But
we're going to keep looking for the boys who are left,"
said his father, Refugio Teran, 83. For three decades, the
Terans have lobbied the Vietnamese and U.S. governments to
search for their son. They collected petitions, traveled
the state speaking to groups, searched military records and
tracked down anyone who might have been near their son that day.
And as the years passed, they watched other parents grow old and
die, their questions unanswered.
"We're the only parents who show up for the (POW/MIA
family) meetings now," his father said. "Every year
there were less and less of us."
The
Terans have their answers now, and the short story of their
son's life finally has an ending, even if it's not a happy one.
No longer missing, but still sorely missed, Tom Teran was born
on Mother's Day 1949 and lost on Mother's Day 1970, two days shy
of his 21st birthday. After a brutal firefight, the
Americans held the hill. The next day, a search and recovery
detail retrieved five injured servicemen and 33 bodies, but
found no trace of Pfc. Tom Teran and another rifleman, Larry
Kier of Tennessee. In those days, families of the missing
were expected to suffer in silence. Not Anna and Refugio
Teran, who, when their children were growing up, always insisted
that the sleep-overs be at their house, so they could keep an
eye on everyone. Who tailed the bus carrying their newly
inducted son past the city limits, hoping for one last glimpse
of him. Who sent him enormous care packages every week and
insisted he write and call whenever he could -- so they would
know where he was. The military sent condolences, and a
box of medals Teran had never told his parents he'd earned. They
promoted him twice during the eight years he was officially
listed as Missing in Action. "I don't want any
medals, I told them. You stay behind and you find my son,"
Anna Teran told the officers. They sent the medals anyway, which
sit in their velvet case in the living room. "That's all I
have left now of my Tommy. My jewels are my children, and right
now I have lost one of the biggest jewels I had." And
so, when the Department of Defense closed the books on the Teran
investigation in 1978, the Terans took over. "For
your kid, you do anything," said Refugio Teran. By the time
the United States renewed its commitment to retrieving all the
war missing in 1992, the Terans knew almost everything about
their son's last days. They
tracked down his buddies, they tracked down the Vietnamese
family Tom used to feed from his weekly care packages, they
tracked down survivors of the battle. One of his uncles, a
career military man, spent
a year in Vietnam searching the region where he was lost.
That May 5, Tom Teran and his buddies were relaxing at the Eagle
Beach Rest and Recovery Area, rejoicing over a larger-than-usual
birthday care package from home, crammed with cake and all the
fixings for a party. Teran, always happy to share the
wealth, strolled over to another serviceman standing nearby and
looking lonely, and invited him to join the
party. "Hi! I'm Tom Teran from Westland, Michigan,
and it's my birthday," he introduced himself, and together
the group set off to get ready for the party and do a little
Mother's Day shopping. He mailed off a package of presents for
home and scrawled a quick note, describing his day, reassuring
his mother he'd taken communion that morning, and mentioning the
name of his new friend -- a kid named Silva from Holland,
Mich. Later, his parents tracked down that soldier, in the
V.A. hospital where he lay with his arm gone and half his face
blown away in the battle for Henderson Hill. It was he, not the
Army, who told them about the alarm that sounded and the
helicopters that scooped up all the soldiers on the base to
defend the bunker. He gave them the horrific details of the
battle, where he had fought, back-to-back with Teran until they
lost track of each other in the fighting. The last thing anyone
saw of Teran was a glimpse of him running toward a barricade.
Now they also have a thick folder from the military's
decade-long search for their son. They know now that a villager,
scavaging scrap in the area, found their son's body later in
1970 and buried it under a simple marker. Searchers from the
military's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting excavated Henderson
Hill in 1992, but maddeningly, missed the grave and marker by
just 200 yards. His remains were finally located in 1996, but
the final identification wasn't complete until last
December. "I kept saying, 'All I want for Christmas
is to know something about my son,' " said Anna Teran.
Tom Teran's return will be marked with a series of memorials
around Metro Detroit: in his hometown of Westland; at the VFW
post that adopted his cause and supported his family all those
years; and at the POW/MIA memorial in Novi, which will add one
more return date to the bronze plaque on National POW/MIA
Recognition Day in September. Dozens of supporters also plan to
join the family at the memorial ceremony in Arlington on April
19. "To me, it's surprising, after all these years,
that so many people still remember," said Refugio Teran.
"It does something for you. It gives you a little bit
of comfort that all these people are there for you."
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