Body Believed To Be Dean Kin Returned [McGovern Campaign Worker]

HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii - Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean joined family members Wednesday for the emotional return of the remains of three Americans and an Australian missing since the Vietnam war. Dean believes one of the Americans is his brother.

Here's a barf-inducing excerpt from the NY Times:

Dean Pauses to Reflect on a Brother's Long Trip Home
By JODI WILGOREN
Published: November 27, 2003

HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii, Nov. 26 — Howard Dean's eyes followed the flag-draped container on Wednesday as four servicemen slowly marched it from a mammoth cargo plane past a military color guard onto the back of a school bus. Dr. Dean did not cry, nor reach for his mother's hand, but simply swallowed hard, once, during the 15-minute ceremony.

Inside the aluminum container — military officials were careful not to call it a coffin — were remains believed to be those of Dr. Dean's brother Charlie, who disappeared while traveling the Mekong River in 1974 as part of a yearlong adventure tour around the world. And so Dr. Dean had interrupted his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to come here.

"This is Charlie coming home — that's better than not having anything," said Dr. Dean, a former governor of Vermont, who has called his brother's disappearance and death "the most traumatic events of my life."

"Of course we've known he's been dead for 29 years," Dr. Dean said in an interview on Tuesday on arriving in Honolulu with his mother, Andree, and two surviving brothers, Jim and Bill. "But it's still hard. All the memories come flooding back."

In all there were four coffinlike containers removed from the C-130 cargo jet that had arrived from Laos, via Guam, on Tuesday. One other set of remains was believed to be those of Neil Sharman, an Australian with whom Charlie Dean had been traveling. The others were believed to be those of airmen. Though Charlie Dean and his friend were civilians, they were given military honors, officials said, on the chance that the remains include those of service members missing in the Vietnam War.

"We don't know who we have until the lab says who we have," said Lt. Col. Gerald O'Hara, a spokesman for the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A. Accounting Command, which runs the international recovery missions and the forensic laboratory here. "Ninety-eight percent of the missing from this war were service members. We're treating everyone as if they could be a service member."

The ceremony was a reminder of the mystery surrounding Charlie Dean's death at age 24 toward the end of the Vietnam War. It remains unclear whether he was executed or felled by disease. Over the years some family members and military investigators have even wondered whether he was working as a spy. Colonel O'Hara said DNA testing to confirm the identity could take up to eight months, although family members are confident of the identity because of the personal items found with the bones. Eventually, the Dean family plans a burial in a cemetery at Sag Harbor, N.Y. There is already a marker there for him in the family plot, placed in 2001, according to the wishes expressed in his father's will.

In a brief statement before the ceremony, Dr. Dean described Charlie, who was 16 months younger, as "an extraordinary person who we're going to miss every day."

"He was a man of deep principle," Dr. Dean added, "who lived his life the way he believed it ought to be lived." [Whoa, that's really deep, man]

In his recently published book, "Winning Back America," Dr. Dean wrote of the disappearance of his brother, who set off for a trip around the world after graduating from the University of North Carolina, working on the George McGovern presidential campaign in 1972 and protesting the Vietnam War. Charlie Dean and Mr. Sharman were taking a raft on the Mekong River from Laos to Thailand on Sept. 5, 1974, Dr. Dean wrote, when they were captured by the Pathet Lao, a communist faction. Around Dec. 14, he said, witnesses saw the two men loaded onto a truck, which returned the next day empty, but for the handcuffs that had bound the two.

Military investigators tried six times to find Charlie Dean and Mr. Sharman. Then a former police guard in the central Laotian province of Bolikhamxai, who said he had witnessed the burial of two Caucasian men in 1974, helped pinpoint the site of the crude grave, and the discoveries began on Nov. 8.

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Rest of story: here

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