Free Republic

ARLINGTON, Va. — In the days after she became sick with the cancer that eventually took her life, Jacquelyn McGouldrick gave her friend Liz Flick two bottles of champagne and an order: Keep these for when her husband came home. Air Force Col. Francis Jay McGouldrick Jr. had gone missing on Dec. 13, 1968, after a midair collision with another U.S. aircraft over Laos. Jacquelyn McGouldrick and her four daughters were left in a limbo as days, then decades, passed. Yesterday, they finally opened the bottles.McGouldrick was home.

The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory have identified the remains of an airman who went missing during the Vietnam War. Air Force Col. Francis McGouldrick Jr., of New Haven, Conn., is to be buried Friday with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on the 45th anniversary of his loss, according to a Pentagon statement Monday.