Thelma Wisecarver saw the story in the Post about Sgt. Major Philip “Butch” Young getting a Legion of Merit award from the U.S. Special Forces — those much admired and highly respected soldiers better known as the Green Berets — and she cried. Again.
She’s cried a lot since Oct. 23, 1992.
That’s almost 10 years ago, almost 10 years since her 26-year-old son, Byron Montgomery “Monty” Wisecarver, who was also a Special Forces soldier, stepped outside his home about 5 a.m. on a chilly, still dark autumn morning to warm his pickup truck before he left for work at Hoechst Celanese, which is now KoSa.
A gunman was waiting. He pulled the trigger twice.
Someone in the neighborhood heard a motorcycle leave.
And Monty, shot in the neck and upper abdomen, struggled back into the house.
His girlfriend called for help.
But about an hour and a half later, as he was being taken to the helipad at the Hefner VA Medical Center to fly to N.C. Baptist Hospital, he died.
His murderer has never been found.
Nor — officially — has any reason been found to explain why it happened.
But his mother still cries — and can’t believe that October coming will be 10 years since she lost her son.
Not that she needs an anniversary to think about him. She thinks about him every day, especially on those days when something triggers tears unexpectedly again.
That’s what happened when she saw the story about Butch Young and his award, and when her tears were dry, she sat down at her computer and wrote to say that Cleveland — little Cleveland, with a population of about 800 — had more than one soldier in Special Forces. And both of them graduated from West Rowan High School.
Monty served with the160th Special Operations Aviation Airborne “Nightstalkers” stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky. His outfit’s motto was “Death Waits in the Dark.”
But it hadn’t waited in the dark for him in Panama when he helped capture Manuel Noreiga, the dictator-drug runner, in December 1989. Or any of the many other times he was in danger for his country.
It waited for him at home. Who killed him and why has never been uncovered. And his parents, Thelma and Junior, and his two children still don’t know — and grieve.
“At the time he was murdered,” his mother says, “that Army group he was in was so secret nothing could be said about what he did or the medals he won.”
That was painful, too
“It’s hard to raise a child up to be what he was by the time he was 26,” she says, and not be able to talk about what he had done for his country but to have to “think somebody would be so evil to wait on him and kill him.
“He’d been working overtime. The check he was going to draw that day was the biggest he’d ever drawn. Over $700. He’d been working at Hoechst Celanese and as an emergency medical technician, and that was a week he’d worked like 16-hour days. And he was planning to get his children, Adam and Brittney, some clothes and eating a pizza and renting a movie for them that night.”
His estranged wife had left him for the third time and signed custody of the children over to him in June.
“The guy who came out with the ambulance was one of his friends, Bobby Safrit, and Monty told him to tell Adam and Brittney he loved them.”
And somebody at the hospital, she says, told her “he died five times, and the fifth time they couldn’t revive him. They almost had him in the helicopter.”
Wisecarver’s father, who also worked at Hoechst Celanese, got a call at work and rushed home.
“And he came in the bedroom and told me to get up. We had to go to the hospital. Monty had been shot. He was already dead, but we didn’t know it.”
They were in that special room where families wait and pray.
“And I was on my knees praying when they came in and told me he was dead,” Thelma says. “And I’m still crying.
“We went straight to the lawyer’s office as soon as we left the sheriff’s office that morning and got temporary custody of the children. We’ve got permanent custody now. Adam is 16 and a junior at West Rowan. Brittney is 14 and in the eighth grade at Morning Star Baptist Academy.
“But God’s still good,” she says, “and our cup’s been running over. I can lay down at night and know where they are and that their stomachs are full and they’re not being abused. ...
“Adam still has a lot of anger, and Brittney still cries for her daddy. She pulls out the videos that had her daddy in them when she was a baby and looks at them. She was just 4 when it happened, but she remembers him. It’s amazing how much they loved that man. They’ve really been a blessing for me.”
But when she read about Butch Young and hearing daily news about the war on terrorism, she had to say something about that other Special Forces soldier who also went to West Rowan and lived in Cleveland and got killed.
He, too, had received medals though nothing about his record could be mentioned publically at the time.
He’d enlisted on Jan. 9, 1987, trained at Fort McClellan, Ala., and had further training at Fort Lee, Va.; the Airborne School at Fort Benning, Ga.; and the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, finishing on Sept. 29, 1989.
He got all the usual certificates for completing those courses.
Moreover, he earned enough medals, badges, citations, commendations, achievement awards and campaign ribbons to make quite a display. They included the Army Achievement Medal for work on testing a unique re-arming and refueling drop platform and two Army Commendation Medals for meritorious achievement in a hostile environment.
When he got out of service and went to work for Hoechst Celanese, he was also a licensed emergency medical technician who loved his work and talked about going back to school to study to become a doctor.
“He was a son to be proud of,” his mother says, “and I am.
“If he’d been out in a bar or doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, but he wasn’t doing a thing but going to work to provide for his kids, and for somebody to stand out there and kill him for nothing ... ”
And she had to get his name on record as another honorable soldier from little Cleveland, N.C., who served his country well.
Especially, she says, “with his death being an unsolved murder.”
“It’s still an open case,” says Rowan County Sheriff George Wilhelm. “I hope anybody who has any information will come forward. Maybe 10 years ago somebody who didn’t want to come forward will now. There’s a mother — and a family — who need closure. We need any little bit of information we can get.”
Maybe, Thelma Wisecarver says, “somebody who knows something might have some pity in them and call something in .... ”
But even that, she knows, won’t stop her tears.
Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com
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