From the day she was told of the plane crash on Dec. 24, 1972, Jean Macdonald sought proof that son George, a 2nd lieutenant with the U.S. Air Force, had perished.
It was a quest that her children took on after the Evanston’s resident’s death in 1985. Even when partial human remains were excavated from the crash site that year and the U.S. government identified them as George Macdonald, his family resisted.
Before even considering burial they wanted proof.
It wasn’t until last December — 44 years after George Macdonald’s plane was reported shot down in Laos at the tail end of the Vietnam War — that the surviving members of the Macdonald family finally got their confirmation: DNA extracted from bone fragments recovered from the crash site in 1985 and held in a laboratory in Hawaii matched that of George Macdonald’s only sister, Jeanette Frye, a medical examiner’s report revealed.
“First, it was shock,” said Frye, a longtime Park Ridge resident and retired kindergarten teacher who provided a blood sample for DNA testing back in 2004. “Now, I have grief. Before, we didn’t know. And not knowing is a different kind of grief than this grief.”
Five years ago, members of the Macdonald family, unable to get a positive DNA identification, said their formal goodbyes to George during a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery. A headstone was placed in an area of the cemetery reserved for those without remains to bury, Frye sad.
But in August, a second ceremony was held. Now with remains to bury, more than 40 members of the Macdonald family and several of George’s friends from Evanston Township High School gathered for a full military funeral at Arlington.
“On the 6th of August, we received his remains at Reagan National Airport; an arch of water was sprayed over the plane as it entered the tarmac,” Frye recalled.
Christopher Macdonald, George’s twin brother, shared words of remembrance during the service, which featured “Chariots of Fire” as the processional song. David Stern, George’s high school track and cross country coach, wrote a tribute to his former student that was part of the ceremony. In it, Stern credited George’s “leadership qualities,” loyalty to teammates and dedication to the sport he loved.
“We really felt he was honored,” Frye said of her brother, who, with his twin, were the youngest of nine Macdonald siblings. “Now we have closure.”
The funeral service was an ending to what Jean Macdonald had fought for over the course of 13 years: An accounting of what happened to George, Frye said.
Believing her son was alive as a prisoner of war, Jean Macdonald wrote letters to government and military officials, attended military hearings, and even flew to Mexico in 1974 to meet with a group of people who showed her a photograph of a man she believed was her son, the Evanston Review reported.
According to a December 2016 report from the medical examiner working with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, two crew members of George Macdonald’s AC-130A Spectre Gunship were able to escape the crash and were rescued.
The remaining 13 crew members, including Macdonald, were declared missing in action, statuses that would change to presumed killed in action seven years later, Frye said.
It was a declaration that Jean Macdonald would protest, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Allen Cronin, Air Force mortuary affairs specialist, worked with the Macdonald family on George’s identification. He credits advances in DNA testing for the ability to positively identify George Macdonald in late 2016 when earlier attempts failed.
“The science of DNA got better,” he said. “The government didn’t stop [testing]. They just weren’t at it every year.”
Ten years ago, the technology had not advanced enough to extract a DNA sequence from the bone fragments, Cronin said. He added that he feels “honored” to be able to help families through the process of identifying long-lost loved ones.
“But it’s almost like a double-edged sword,” he acknowledged. “You open up old wounds, but you are also closing some.”
For Jeanette Frye, her brother’s story is one she has publicly shared throughout the years. At the Park Ridge Public Library, Frye recently created a display of newspaper articles, photographs and other memorabilia pertaining to George and the attempts to determine his fate.
“I’m standing there, and people are commenting on it,” Frye said proudly. “I’m adding things, and people are reading it.”
She also spoke before an audience at the Park Ridge City Council’s Sept. 18 meeting, encouraging the community to visit The Wall that Heals, a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., when it is displayed at Lake Park in Des Plaines from Sept. 27 through Oct. 1.
“My brother’s name is on that wall,” she said. “He’s right near the bottom because [he died] one month before the war ended.”
Twitter: @Jen_Tribune
