Air Force vet comes home

Burial will close circle that began with Laos crash

Jeff Kass, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 9, 2007 at midnight

Text size

More Local News

More stories »

Details of Air Force Maj. John L. Carroll's death are vivid enough.

He was alone in a small, O-1G Bird Dog flying over Laos on Nov. 7, 1972, when his plane was shot down.

Carroll crash-landed and radioed that he would stay next to the plane. His family says accounts indicate he died while fighting back with a gun and grenades as enemy troops closed in.

"Knowing John, he would not be taken prisoner easily," his 87-year-old mother, Mary M. Hancock, said from her home in Marietta, Ga., on Thursday.

But Carroll's remains were never recovered until this year, despite a search that began in 1993. A particularly pessimistic government report last year left family members thinking nothing would ever be found.

Now, family members have the bittersweet joy of burying Carroll's remains at the Air Force Academy Cemetery in Colorado Springs next week.

"It was just so unexpected," Carroll's daughter, Julie Zouzounis, now 42, said Thursday. "It was exciting and wonderful and fitting. It also brings up a lot of other intense emotions you had tucked away."

The search for Carroll's remains was undertaken by the military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, based at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.

It is not unusual for an investigation to take years, given factors such as launching excavations and negotiating with foreign governments for access. And the remains may amount to nothing more than teeth or bone fragments after decades of decay. Dental fragments alone were what was found in Carroll's case, according to his family.

Carroll, a 1962 graduate of the Air Force Academy, was 32 when he was shot down. The Georgia native left behind wife, Beverly, daughter, Julie, and son, Mike. He is also survived by two brothers. His father, Leonard, had died in June 1972, according to Hancock.

Beverly Carroll died in 1995 of cancer at age 54 and was buried at the Academy Cemetery. John Carroll will be buried next to her Tuesday in a ceremony open to the public that begins at 10 a.m. at the Cadet Catholic Chapel.

The location seems fitting in many ways. The couple had hoped to retire in Colorado, Hancock said, and Beverly is from Holyoke.

While the family thought this day would never come, investigators were in fact gathering evidence. In 2001 they had obtained items including an Armed Forces ID card, Geneva Conventions card, Georgia drivers license, 1972 pocket calendar and American Express card belonging to Carroll.

In March of this year, they uncovered the grave site.

Carroll's mother recalls that only one date on her son's calendar was circled for December: the fourth, when he was to go on leave.

Carroll's son, Mike, a 43-year-old purchasing manager in Green Bay, Wis., now holds the ID cards and calendar. He says the calendar entries are in black except for one in blue: Nov. 7, 1972 reads, "Shot down on the Plain of Jars," the location in Laos known for its ancient jars.

Mike Carroll hasn't tried to see if the credit card works; he jokes that there might be an outstanding balance.

But one mystery remains. A laminated photo of an American pilot that appears to come from a newspaper was found with Carroll's cards. No one knows who the man is, but Mike Carroll will pass the photo around at the funeral and ask the many friends and colleagues of his father who are expected to attend.

"This is really an opportunity for me to get to know him better," Mike Carrol said.

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News