Sons close book on mystery of father lost at war
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE — When he was 5, David Evert watched his father get on a TWA flight in Phoenix and leave for the war in Vietnam.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Air Force Capt. Lawrence Evert turned, waved goodbye to his pregnant wife and three young children, and never returned.
David Evert, 40, left, and brother Daniel, 42, spoke at Hickam Air Force Base about how their father's remains were located in Vietnam and brought home to Arizona for burial. Capt. Lawrence G. Evert, then 29, had been shot down over Vietnam in 1967.
The F-105D Thunderchief pilot was shot down about three months later, on Nov. 8, 1967, while on a combat mission in North Vietnam to bomb the Phuc Yen rail bridge north of Hanoi.
His family waited 33 years to find that out.
Yesterday, David, now 40, and Dan, 42, helped wrap their father's remains in a blanket at the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory, Hawai'i, and today — with his Air Force full dress uniform in the casket — will take their father home.
"People ask us if this is a somber or sad time. It's not, it's a happy time — we are excited this has come to this point," said David Evert, who lives in Woodland, Calif.
End to mystery
For the Evert family, the investigation mounted by the central identification laboratory and Joint Task ForceiFull Accounting led
to the answers they had long searched for, several trips by family members to the recovery site in Vietnam — which then-President Clinton visited in November 2000 — and the ability to bury their father back in Arizona.
A funeral for Capt. Lawrence Evert, who was promoted to lieutenant colonel while he was missing, is scheduled for Friday at Mesa Cemetery.
"It's unbelievable," David Evert said yesterday. "Thirty-three years of not knowing anything — not knowing how he died, where he might have died — to actually going to experience it, see where he crashed, to see where the plane finally went in."
On that November day, 29-year-old Lawrence Evert, flying as wingman, gave the thumbs-up to a fellow F-105 flier and swooped down to bomb the main rail line running from North Vietnam through China and into Russia.
"My father was flying behind him," said Dan Evert, who lives in Chandler, Ariz., "so none of them actually saw him get shot. As they came up out of the bombing run, he didn't report in."
The 6-foot-5 bear of a man whom Dan Evert remembers as a "gentle giant" was gone. The Air Force passed along what information it had, but the family knew only that he had been shot down somewhere over North Vietnam.
Crash site found
In 1993, the central identification laboratory at Hickam and Joint Task Force at Camp Smith began investigating the loss. Search personnel found the crash site in June 2000, and by October the Defense Department was providing the details — and asking if it was all right for Clinton to visit.
The crash site was in rice fields near the base of the railroad track, and remains were found 16 to 18 feet underground. Three recovery missions were conducted, and the last team brought Evert's remains to Hawai'i for positive identification in October of 2001.
On the last trip, Evert's wallet containing his ID was found — including a still-identifiable picture — along with his dog tags and "LDS" (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) tags, and his service pistol.
"Everything that would tell us it was him was there," David Evert said.
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
