A freshman from Illinois, Boyer had followed older brother Alan's footsteps to Missoula and the University of Montana. She routinely dropped a letter in the dorm postal box addressed to Alan in Vietnam.
Sometimes she found one from Alan waiting for her.
“It said ‘Missing' on it,” said Judi Boyer Bouchard, who lives in Leesburg, Fla., and still has the card she got back.
So began a heart-rending wait that has stretched to 40 years.
A call home to her parents confirmed what Judi dreaded. Three days after Alan Boyer and two other Green Berets had been left behind by a helicopter fleeing heavy fire, Dorothy and Charles Boyer received the knock on the door that families of all soldiers dread.
It was early in the morning, and the Boyers were getting ready for work, Dorothy, 88, recalled recently from her home in Rockford, Ill.
“This car pulled up with uniformed personnel,” she said. “They were not officers; they were in the Army Reserve or something. They came to the door and wanted to see both of us.”
Their son was missing in action in Southeast Asia, they heard. Something about a helicopter, an evacuation and heavy enemy fire. That's all that was known. When more was discovered, the Boyers would be notified.
It took a while, but the Boyers did find out more. They found, five years later, that Alan wouldn't be coming home with hundreds of American prisoners of war when the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam.
Then they learned where Alan was when he disappeared - and it wasn't in Vietnam.
The aborted evacuation took place across the border in Laos, in the province of Savannakhet. By then the United States' role in a “secret war” in Laos was widely known.
In 1990, the Homecoming II Project researched and released details about the incident.
On March 28, 1968, Boyer, fellow rifleman Charles Huston of Ohio, and intelligence Sgt. George Brown were on a reconnaissance mission with eight South Vietnamese soldiers in rugged jungle-covered mountains 15 miles inside Laos. It was a sector that housed the North Vietnamese control center on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The patrol came under fire and, realizing they were outnumbered and outgunned, requested a helicopter to extract them. The chopper dropped a rope ladder through the dense jungle, and the Vietnamese soldiers clambered to safety.
In the face of heavy enemy automatic weapons fire, Boyer grabbed the ladder and started to climb. At the same time, the helicopter began to vacate. The ladder caught in the foliage and broke. Boyer fell to the ground, apparently unhurt.
When last seen, he, Brown and Huston were alive and “successfully defending their position,” according to reports.
A six-hour ground search for the men on April 1 found nothing. That was the day after Dorothy and Charles Boyer were notified Alan was missing. They decided to wait until they heard something more to tell Judi in Missoula. Judi's returned mail trumped them.
Of the 1,763 Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, 18 are listed as coming from Montana. Six of those disappeared in Laos. Boyer and U.S. Navy pilot Lt. Michael Bouchard, who grew up in Bonner, are two of the six.
Bouchard was shot down in the same sector of Laos nine months after Boyer went missing, and though there was no conclusive evidence that he died at the time, his official status is “presumed killed in action.”
Boyer, Brown and Huston, originally deemed missing, were eventually moved to the “dead/body not recovered” list. There's a reasonable chance that one or all of them were captured by enemy forces and interred in prison camps.
That's what the Boyers say they were led to believe.
“We really hung on that. There was not a doubt in my mind that he would come home,” said Judi, who in an ironic twist, married a man named Bouchard who was not related to the Missoula pilot.
Then, after the U.S. troops left Vietnam and the POWs were sent home, a telegram informed the Boyers that Alan was not on the list.
“I just Š I couldn't believe it,” Judi said. “I remember watching as the POWs came off the airplane when they got to Clark Air Force Base (in the Philippines). There was like 581 of them.
“You were so thrilled to see every one of them walk off that plane, but it was like, why can't just one more walk off that plane? Why can't Alan come home?”
She had good reason to think he'd make it. Alan wasn't a great student, but he was very bright, she said. He was resourceful, gregarious and “very, very athletic.”
While the Boyers had no idea what his special operations duties were, they knew he was trained “in escape and evasion,” his sister said.
“He was strong. He wasn't that big a guy, probably only 5-10 maybe, but very muscular and in great shape. We thought if anyone can come out of this Š Alan will surely show up.”
Boyer had been vice president of the student council at his high school in Decatur, Ill. He spent the summer of 1964 after graduation working at Yellowstone National Park. Always oriented to the outdoors, Alan set his sights on forestry school at the University of Montana.
There he studied and joined a fraternity, Theta Chi. But as the Vietnam War escalated, Boyer started having second thoughts about a career in forestry, his sister said. When he came home for Christmas one year, he asked his parents what they thought about him joining the service.
“I think a recruiter from Butte got hold of him,” Dorothy said. She and Charles, who died in 1995 during bypass surgery, weren't keen on the idea, but said they'd support any decision he made.
“He was very idealistic because, you know, we're going to save everybody from communism, we're going to make the world a better place,” Alan's mother said.
Judi followed her only sibling to Missoula and UM in the fall of '67. She found it “hysterical” when she discovered Alan's photo on the cover of the course catalog that year, his eyes riveted to a microscope.
An anthropology major, Judi graduated from UM in three years, returned home to the Midwest for a time, then moved back to Missoula. She stayed for nine years, working in the human resources at the university and living in Lincolnwood before moving east again.
A few years after Alan disappeared, Dorothy and Charles Boyer started a scholarship fund at UM, which still gives at least two $1,000 scholarships a year to needy students with good grades.
The Boyers have no more family ties to Montana, but the granddaughter of a friend of Dorothy's just moved with her husband to Missoula.
Dorothy and the friend just might jump on the train and pay a visit this fall. Although she has traveled extensively - “My mother is a very active 88,” Judi said - it will be Dorothy's first glimpse of Missoula.
For their own reasons, perhaps related to Alan Boyer's role in the covert war, the Army and Defense Department have long been reluctant to dole out information about him.
“They didn't tell us, and they still won't tell us, much of anything about what he was doing,” Judi said.
She figured the least they could do was let the Boyers talk with someone on the search and rescue team.
“They wouldn't give us names, wouldn't tell us anything,” she said. “I tried to find out some things on my own. Š I just ran into a bunch of dead ends.”
Finally, just a couple of years ago, the identities of the searchers were revealed.
“They were all dead,” Judi said.
For going on 40 years, Dorothy Boyer and her daughter have been active in the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing In Southeast Asia. They rarely miss the league's yearly meeting in Washington, D.C.
They watched over the years as the Vietnamese and Lao governments denied there were live Americans in prison camps in their countries. Ample evidence, some of it based on firsthand reports, indicated otherwise.
According to one POW Web site, an Asian prisoner who escaped from the Vietnamese in Laos in 1989 was interviewed by U.S. officials in Thailand.
“He stated that he spoke with (Huston), who told him if he ever got free to let the world know, ‘That my name is Huston, and there are other Americans held with me,' ” a report on www.powfoia.org reads.
Years after the wars ended, search teams were finally allowed to look for evidence of Americans. There were several excavations at the site where Boyer, Huston and Brown were last seen.
Most of them turned up nothing, Judi said.
“Then, just a few years ago, they found one tooth,” she said.
After DNA analysis, it was determined to belong to George Brown.
“I told my mom that gives me no closure,” Judi Bouchard said. “I mean, it could have been knocked out. It's not like they found a mass gravesite, or other effects and bones or whatever.
“A tooth didn't do it for me.”
So the wait continues.
In 2001, Dorothy and Judi learned of a tour group going to Southeast Asia. They'd been thinking about visiting Vietnam.
“When we found out they were going to Laos, we said, ‘We've got to go, at least just to be in the country,' ” Dorothy said.
Imagine the surprise when Judi and her 81-year-old mother showed up unannounced at the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
“They were so gracious, these military guys,” Judi said.
One, a man involved in POW/MIA recovery activities, had hung on the wall a photo of the first site he'd helped excavate in Laos. Incredibly, it was the site of Alan Boyer's disappearance, or thought to be.
“They didn't put it up just for us, because they didn't even know we were coming,” said Judi. The Boyers learned that the site was heavily forested and virtually inaccessible.
The women say they didn't learn much else.
“We really didn't expect to,” Dorothy said. “But we got into the embassy and talked to people. So that was, I don't know, comforting to a degree.”
Judi Bouchard doesn't really expect to ever see her brother walk through the door. Neither does Dorothy. But she will always hold onto a glimmer of hope.
Dorothy is also heavily involved in Vietnow, a group of veterans based in Rockford that concerns itself with issues of veterans and their families from wars in Vietnam to today.
Alan's birthday was March 8. He would have been 62 years old.
When Judi thinks of Alan, she still sees him as the strapping 22-year-old he was in 1968.
And Dorothy?
“Yes and no, because of the Vietnow guys who have been so wonderful to me,” she said. “Everybody calls me Mom, because they're all Alan's age, between 58 and 63. I can think maybe this is what he might look like.”
Dorothy keeps a flag and Alan's medals and other mementoes in her den in Rockford.
“I don't know where the 40 years has gone really, but it's something we think about all the time,” she said. “I mean, there isn't a day that I don't.”
“I can empathize with anyone who's had a loved one missing,” Judi said. “You can't even imagine what it's like, that one day they're there and then - you know nothing.
“Had he gone over there, been killed and they return the body, you can kind of grieve and go on with things. But when you don't know, it's just like this open wound. A day doesn't go by when I don't think about Alan and wonder what happened.”
Western Montana military personnel still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War
Michael Bouchard
Hometown: Missoula
Age: 30
Branch: Navy
Disappeared: Dec. 20, 1968; shot down, Laos
A Top Gun pilot from a Navy family who grew up in Bonner, graduated from Missoula County High School, and was a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. A lieutenant commander, Bouchard was shot down in an A6A Intruder over Muong Nong, Laos, Savannakhet province. His navigator parachuted to safety and escaped, but couldn't locate Bouchard on the ground. Listed as “presumed killed in action,” though an investigation years after the war indicated Bouchard may have survived the crash and was possibly captured in Laos. The Senate Select Committee for MIA/POW Affairs requested in 1992 that his status be changed to “missing in action/presumed captured,” but Bouchard remains listed as PKIA.
Anthony Cadwell
Hometown: Missoula
Age: 22
Branch: Army
Disappeared: Oct. 17, 1967; drowned, South Vietnam
Attended Missoula Loyola through his junior year before possibly moving to Hawaii. An Army private, Cadwell was caught in an undertow and drowned in the South China Sea while swimming at a USO beach adjacent to his base at Chu Lai, Quang Tin province, South Vietnam. Three swimmers attempted to reach him. They heard Cadwell call for help in rough water, but he disappeared before he could be reached. An extensive sea, air and land search that day and the next found no trace of the body. Cadwell was reported as “killed/body not recovered.”
Michael Havranek
Hometown: Missoula
Age: 19
Branch: Marines
Disappeared: June 11, 1967; shot down, South Vietnam
Graduated from Missoula Loyola and joined the Marines in June 1966. A lance corporal, Havranek was one of 11 men who died when a helicopter was shot down nine miles south of the Demilitarized Zone while attempting to insert its crew of Marines on an intelligence mission. Three men were killed and seven wounded in an attempt to reach the crash site several days later. All that could be seen was blackened earth. The crash victims were listed as “killed in action/bodies not recovered.” Remains were excavated in 1998, and those of at least two men have been identified.
James Hunt
Hometown: Missoula
Age: 31
Branch: Navy
Disappeared: Oct. 13, 1968; presumed killed in action, shot down, North Vietnam
Lieutenant commander and navigator on a two-man A6A Intruder with Cmdr. Quinlan Orell. They were returning to the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea after a reconnaissance mission and passed through an area of reported anti-aircraft fire. U.S. surface ship radar tracked the plane as it crossed the coast, 10 miles north of Ha Tinh. Then all contact was lost. Listed as an “over-water loss.” The crew was declared missing in action. Ten years later, that status was changed to “presumed killed in action.”
Victor Pirker
Hometown: Trout Creek
Age: 25
Branch: Marines
Disappeared: Nov. 22, 1965; presumed killed in action, helicopter crash, South Vietnam
Gunnery sergeant and one of four men on a helicopter piloted by Francis Visconti on a combat mission on a stormy night in South Vietnam. Weather forced the chopper out to sea, about halfway between Chu Lai and Dan Nang, Quang Ngai province, and it was separated from the rest of the group. The chopper went down, and all four Marines were classified as missing in action. The incident was listed as battle related, which indicates they were hit by enemy fire. Some believe Vietnam could account for the four men, but the Vietnamese have denied all knowledge of them.
Edward Letchworth
Hometown: Libby
Age: 25
Branch: Navy
Disappeared: Feb. 27, 1967; presumed killed in action
A 1960 graduate of Walla Walla (Wash.) High School. Presumably lived in Libby after that. Lieutenant commander of a four-man crew on a helicopter that crashed in the process of launching from an aircraft carrier in an unknown location, probably on a pilot rescue mission. The chopper lifted tail high, flipped, and partially recovered before hitting the water. It broke apart on impact. A search helicopter was immediately over the scene and two Navy destroyers joined in the search. The four men were never found. They were declared “killed/bodies not recovered.” The accident is listed as non-combat related.
Other Montanans missing in action
Col. David Allinson, Helena, 33, Air Force, disappeared Aug. 12, 1966
Maj. Richard Appelhans, Dodson, 29, Air Force, disappeared Oct. 16, 1967
Lt. Cmdr. Alan Ashall, Billings, 25, Navy, disappeared Aug. 29, 1968
Lt. Cmdr. William Christensen, Great Falls, 25, Navy, disappeared March 1, 1966
Petty Officer 2nd Class Jack Dempsey, Helena, 21, Navy, disappeared June 17, 1966
Capt. Charles Dudley, Bozeman, 29, Air Force, disappeared June 28, 1966
Capt. Robert Holton, Butte, 27, Air Force, disappeared Jan. 29, 1969
Spc. Patrick Mgee, Alder, 24, Army, disappeared Jan. 3, 1971
Lt. Cmdr. Lee Nordahl, Choteau, 26, Navy, disappeared Dec. 20, 1965
Col. Dean Pogreba, Three Forks, 43, Air Force, disappeared Oct. 5, 1965
Maj. Robert Willett Jr., Great Falls, Air Force, disappeared April 17, 1969
Families work to keep MIA issue at the forefront
By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian
It's a never-ending countdown.
Each year, the remains of nearly 100 Americans who fought in foreign wars are recovered, identified and returned home.
But the pool is overwhelming: The bodies or whereabouts of some 88,000 warriors are still unaccounted for, including a whopping 78,000 from World War II and 8,100 from the Korean War.
“I definitely feel that there should be a conclusion and an accounting for all the missing. We can't possibly just throw them down the drain and forget about them,” said Dorothy Boyer, whose son Alan, a University of Montana student from Illinois, disappeared 40 years ago on an intelligence mission in Laos.
The number of soldiers from the Vietnam War who remain unaccounted for dipped below 1,800 - to 1,763 - as of mid-February.
Montana's list, which originally included 22 men, stands at 18 today. It was reduced most recently when the remains of Randolph Perry, shot down over Hanoi in 1972, were returned to his hometown of Troy in 2004. Last fall, the remains of Donald Wolfe were shipped home to Hardin to be interred this spring. He was killed in 1967 in a plane crash near DaNang.
Seven of those Montanans still unaccounted for had “homes of record” from western Montana, five of them from Missoula.
The United States pulled out of Vietnam in 1973. In April of that year, 591 prisoners of war captured in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were returned home. That left an estimated 2,550 Americans who were either reported killed or missing to be accounted for.
Sightings and reports of live prisoners or other Americans still in the three countries began filtering in almost immediately after communist takeovers there in 1975. They continue to this day.
Those reports are “rigorously scrutinized” as a top priority, according to the Defense Department's Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO).
In 1991, Vietnam agreed to let U.S. teams conduct live-sighting investigations in that country. According to DPMO, the United States has pursued more than 100 sightings in Vietnam with little advance warning and another 20 or more in Laos and Cambodia.
“To date, not one investigation on live sightings has yielded proof that American POWs were left behind in Indochina after the war,” says a booklet issued by the DPMO.
Most of the western Montanans still unaccounted for died immediately. But the families of Bouchard and Boyer had reason to believe those men were captured and held in POW camps. Yet neither was returned in 1973.
Dorothy Boyer said that's one reason she and her daughter, Judi, have long belonged to an organization known, in total, as the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.
The roots of the league trace to the late 1960s and families of POWs disgruntled with the government's policy of requesting that they keep quiet about their stories.
“Some of the young wives at the time finally got fed up with not having enough information from government sources,” Judi Boyer Bouchard said. “They were the ones who really pushed for more information, and really got the word out that people were being held as POWs. That's kind of when the whole POW bracelets came out.”
Nearly 5 million of the bracelets, each bearing the name of a known or suspected prisoner in Southeast Asia, were sold between 1970 and 1976. Some are still worn today. The real Adrian Cronhauer, whose character was portrayed by Robin Williams as a whacked-out radio DJ in the film “Good Morning, Vietnam,” reportedly wears the bracelet of Michael Bouchard, a top Navy pilot from Bonner who was shot down in 1968.
The Boyers and the National League of Families think Vietnam should be held more accountable for producing reports and remains of Americans there. Intelligence indicated that some 200 prisoners remained behind in Vietnam and the part of Laos it controlled when the United States pulled out, yet the remains of less than half that number have been produced.
“The Vietnamese and Lao should have been able to say, you know, they were alive or in captivity, and they should have been able to say this is what happened to all these people,” said Boyer Bouchard, who is not related to Michael Bouchard. “They weren't able to.”
“They kept such detailed records (in Vietnam),” Dorothy Boyer said. “They've released of them piecemeal, (and) they claim they're cooperating, but they could do a little more.”
It's an issue near and dear to her heart.
“If it isn't kept a little bit in the forefront, it will die completely,” Boyer said. “This country needs to be aware that there were people left behind.”
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