Family's 23-Year Ordeal Eases As Mia Is Laid To Rest Remains Of 7 Buried
Together
Times Picayune 04-6-1996

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A nightmare that began in the dark over Laos 23 years ago ended for an Algiers
family last week, as six white horses pulled a flag-draped coffin to its grave
beneath the cherry blossoms in Arlington National Cemetery.

The remains of 25-year-old Air Force Lt. Severo James "Sonny" Primm III
finally were laid to rest, and in the process his loved ones were released
from the torturous vigil that has held them for more than two decades.

"We learn how to carry on with our lives in the face of death. This world is
for the living, and we have to let go of our dead so that we all can rest in
peace," said Randy Primm, who traveled to Washington to help bury his oldest
brother. "We learn from experience . . . and I have learned the value of the
funerary ritual. Until the coffin is placed in the ground and the earth closes
over it, our wounds will not heal."

For the family of Sonny Primm, a Martin Behrman High School graduate who
married his college sweetheart on graduation day from Louisiana State
University in 1971, the healing has been a long time coming.

Primm and seven other Air Force crew members perished when their C-47 spy
plane was downed by enemy fire on Feb. 4, 1973, barely a week after the Paris
Peace Accords ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The remains of one of the eight crew members, whose partial torso was thrown
from the burned aircraft, were recovered within days and buried, but the
government didn't go back for the others until a joint U.S.-Laos team searched
the crash site in 1993. Scattered bone fragments and a single tooth were the
only human remains discovered, although military-issue pistols and the
remnants of eight parachutes convinced the Air Force that the entire crew died
in the fiery crash of the plane, dubbed "Baron 52."

More than two years later, the scant and commingled remains of Primm and the
other six were enclosed in a single coffin and lowered into a grave in the
nation's most prestigious military cemetery.

The burial with full military honors played out under a crystalline spring sky
on March 27. The hearse traversed the winding Arlington cemetery paths,
followed by about 100 mourners, including two Air Force generals.

A mounted officer on a seventh white horse led the cortege as the solemn music
of an Air Force band filled the air with mourning. An honor guard stood in
salute, rifles at "present arms." A lone airman flew the black POW-MIA "You
are not forgotten flag," and three Air Force C-130 Hercules transport planes
flew overhead in the "missing man" formation.

A rifle squad fired a 21-gun salute, and a solitary bugler stood away from the
crowd and played "Taps."

More than two decades after he died, Sonny Primm's family finally could say
good-bye. At the graveside was his widow, Kathy Nolan Primm of Baton Rouge.
Also present were the airman's parents, Jim and Elsie Primm, his only sister,
Jamie Primm, and brother Randy Primm - all of Algiers - and brother Chris
Primm of Chalmette.

The burial might not bring the same closure for all of those involved,
however.

Families of two Baron 52 crew members refuse to accept the Air Force's
findings and hold out hope that their loved ones survived the crash. They
attended the military burial but wore yellow ribbons signifying their hope,
Randy Primm said.

"There's some hostility between those two families and the rest of us," he
said. "It took the Air Force two years to overrule their protest so that we
could have the funeral. It just made everybody continue to suffer longer."

Indeed, mystery and controversy has surrounded the fate of the men aboard
Baron 52 since the reconnaissance aircraft was shot down. In the days
immediately after the crash, a U.S. military intelligence officer picked up a
North Vietnamese radio transmission that indicated four Americans had been
captured in the region and were being transported to the Soviet Union.

Some MIA and POW activists have used the crash - and that radio transmission -
to argue that Vietnam and its allies still have not come clean about the fate
of missing U.S. military personnel.

Randy Primm and others think the timing of the crash - coming just as a peace
accord was tentatively being drawn and the transfer of some POWs being
negotiated - added to the mystery and to the government's refusal to press for
information about the crewmen.

But after the crash site was combed in 1993, he said he accepted that his
brother had died on the jungle floor. Despite the lack of complete physical
remains, the remnants of eight parachutes and the recovery of four flight
pistols - established by serial numbers to be those issued to Primm and the
other three offices aboard - convinced him.

For Randy Primm, that was the moment of knowing. The funeral was the moment of
farewell.

"He was my big brother. We grew up together and shared a room," he said. "But
it was time, past time, to say 'good bye.' "