U.S. Pilot's Remains Identified As Brother Of Salisbury's Eldridge Williams

By ROSE POST
SALISBURY POST

For more than 30 years, Eldridge Williams has believed his older brother perished during the war in Vietnam.

Now he knows it - and has his brother's dog tags, just one piece of a patchwork quilt of evidence retrieved from a mountainside near the South China Sea.

Two U.S. Army representatives visited Williams, director of community and governmental relations at Livingstone College, Monday night to verify findings which have been investigated since 1993.

Williams learned earlier this year that the investigation was underway.

"I had the feeling all the while," Williams said this morning, "but it does bring closure."

"I feel like he really knew in his heart that (his brother) hadn't survived it," Williams' wife, Brenda, said, "but I thought he might have been a prisoner of war."

Capt. Troy Lewis of Fort Bragg and Harry Campbell of the Army's Recovery Department in Washington, visited the Williams' home on West Thomas Street for about two hours last night, going over information and leaving the dog tags and a booklet outlining the Army's findings about the death of Capt. Thaddeus Edward Williams Jr..

Capt. Williams, a reconnaissance pilot, disappeared on Jan. 9, 1966, while Eldridge Williams was a freshman at Livingstone. He was not declared missing until 1967, however.

Lost with him was Spec. 4 James P. Schimberg, a photographer.

Born in 1943 and a member of the ROTC while a student at Tuskeegee University in Tuskeegee, Ala., Thaddeus Williams Jr. went to Vietnam in 1965 following his graduation with a degree in architecture.

The family stopped hearing from him in January 1966, which is when the Army now says he died. But the Army did not declare him missing in action until a year later.

"From then until now," Williams said, "there was nothing."

He has been the Army's contact person since his father's death in 1994.

The report he received Monday night indicates that "Lt. Williams was forced to fly their OV-MC Mohawk by dead reckoning. Weather in the area was deemed marginal with prevailing low cloud cover over the mountains when the last radio contact was made at 2400 hours on Jan. 9, 1966.

"The aircraft never returned to home base, and search attempts discovered no evidence of either the aircraft or the crew."

Capt. Williams, who had been subsequently promoted, and Spec. 4 Schimberg, the report continued, were carried in the status of "presumed dead, bodies not recovered."

Tentatively, the Army plans to hold joint funeral services at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington in late February. Williams said the investigation began when two Vietnamese informants who live in Ho Chi Minh City found eight to 10 bones and the dog tags on a mountainside in the Phu Yen Province of South Vietnam, close to the South China Sea. They were turned over to the Army.

In August 1993, teams from the United States and the Republic of Vietnam interviewed the two Vietnamese informants, who told them of a burned identification card bearing the picture of a black man and the name Thaddeus Williams.

"But the informants will not take them to the crash site," Williams was told. "Nobody from the U.S. government has seen the crash site."

The Army did a full investigation, including a comparison of the DNA from the recovered bones with the DNA in a blood sample Eldridge Williams provided. The findings were then turned over to three forensic anthropologists.

The report still has to go before a final review board.

"The Army got the remains in 1993," Williams said. "I just found out earlier this year."

Their parents and a sister have died. Williams, his own three children and his sister's daughter are Thaddeus Williams' only survivors.

The Army representatives told Eldridge Williams last night that he would have the choice of the place of burial. It could be in Arlington; Mobile, Ala., where his parents are buried; or here.

"I'm leaning towards Arlington at this point," he said.

Williams tried unsuccessfully Monday night to contact the sister of his brother's photographer.

His emotions today remain confused.

At first he felt hurt, shock, but mostly relief.

"I wanted to know what they were going to say," he said, "and how they put it together."