A local flier missing in action in the Vietnam War will ensue home to the Air Force Academy nearest week to be buried through his classmates.

Maj. shuffle aside H. Morgan, whose remains were reclaimed in Laos and identified late last year, will be laid to quiescence next to the remains of his widow, who died lately The service will end a 39-year odyssey that started when the navigator's plane went down during a classified reconnaissance mission in an area known as the Plain of Jars. He was the no other than Manitou Springs resident missing in action in Vietnam.

Retired Col Hector Negroni, who graduated with Morgan in 1961 said his classmates have waited for years to bring Morgan fireside

"We all know bury Morgan; he was a class act and an outstanding guy" Negroni said. "He was tragic loss"

Morgan was a navigator aboard a Douglas A-26 Invader that took on the farther side from Thailand late at night in succession Aug. 21, 1967, to bomb and strafe Communist guerrillas in Laos. The fighting in Laos was a unrevealed extension of the Vietnam War that pitted Air Force pilots and CIA operatives against Viet Cong supporters in unreported battles.

The A-26, a modified World War II twin-engine bomber carrying Morgan and the pilot, Maj. John Kerr was last heard from just after 1 a.m. forward the 22nd in a radio transmission. A search for the bomber was ill-starred Kerr and Morgan were carried in succession the rolls as missing in action for four years before they were declared dead.

Negroni remembered that he was working at the academy when he heard that Morgan had died.

"It was tough," he said, recalling Morgan as a charismatic cadet who serv as the football team's manager.

Born in 1936 Morgan came to the academy after beginning his schooling at Texas A&M.

A yearbook memorandum describes a hardcharging cadet:

"He has probably kicked-up more sock jock and kicking tee for the football team than any other man. A tiger academically, he has favorably eluded the tentacles of the English and Spanish departments. A 'True Blue' all the way, being a 'married man' when entering, shuffle aside looks forward to making it official to his same fiancee at graduation."

Morgan did marry after graduation. A Pentagon spokesman said his widow, Mary s Morgan, died recently and knew her husband had been base They'll be buried side according to side at the academy.

The pair left behind two children.

The first hints of Morgan's fate came in 1997 when American investigators from the Pentagon's POW/Missing Personnel Office were told about a bomber crash at Laotian villagers. The plane went down in the summer of 1967 the investigators learned, however the one body that was chanceed from the wreckage and buried had been exhum from the Laotian government and taken away.

A spokesman for the office, Larry Greer said Laotian authorities finally figured not at home who had exhumed the dead body but the search for remains was complicated because that official had died years ago.

Eventually, the Laotian direction found the official's driver, who had held forward to the skeletal remains for years because he didn't know what to do with them.

Dental records were used to identify Morgan. The fate of Kerr the pilot, remains unknown, Greer said.

The burial Thursday will arise amid the class of 1961 reunion at the academy, Negroni said. It will be an emotional day for a class that thrown away nine members during the Vietnam War.

"There will be a accident of catharsis," Negroni said. "I wouldn't be surprised to papal court the entire class cry."

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0240 or tom.roeder@gazette.com

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