The surviving brothers and sisters of Air Force Col. Roosevelt Hestle ‘Hess’ Jr., gathered for a burial service at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday. In June 2017, Hestle’s family was notified that human remains recovered from the crash site of a plane shot down during combat action over North Vietnam in 1966 had been positively identified as those of Hestle.

Hestle’s sister, Marjorie Hill-Taylor, 88, of Eureka, who has spent nearly 52 years wondering what happened to her older brother, attended the ceremony.

“It’s a mixture of emotions, some good some bad,” Hill-Taylor told the Times-Standard before flying to Washington, D.C. “We are a really close family and ‘Hess’ flew up to Eureka to visit me before he was sent over there. I don’t really know how to prepare myself for the return of the remains. Maybe after the ceremony I can re-establish a sense of connection with him.”

It was on the afternoon of July 6, 1966, then-Major Hestle was the lead pilot in a formation of four U.S. Air Force F-150 Thunderchief fighter-bombers on a search-and-destroy mission over North Vietnam.

The F-105 “Thud” flew more missions in Vietnam than any other aircraft and therefore suffered the most losses of air crews and aircraft and they were primarily used to suppress anti-aircraft sites in coordination with bombing activities and other air-to-ground missions.

In the back seat of Hestle’s plane that day was Electronic Warfare Officer Capt. Charles E. Morgan, as they flew above the city of Thai Nguyen, about 35 miles north of Hanoi.

According to Air Force after-action reports, the formation came under missile attack, Hestle issued a missile warning to the section and the planes dropped to 500 feet in evasive action.

The other pilots quickly lost sight of Hestle’s plane as they came under intense anti-aircraft fire. The crew of one aircraft then reported seeing a fireball on a nearby hillside although the crash had gone unobserved.

Repeated attempts to make contact with Hestle’s plane were unsuccessful and because of the hostile nature of the area, a search and rescue operation could not be launched.

Based on that information, the Air Force declared Hestle missing in action and his status would remain that way until 1979. Morgan’s remains would be located, identified and returned to his family in 1995. But Hestle’s remains were not located for more than 50 years after the crash.

It was on April 17, 1979, that the Air Force Department of Manpower and Personnel sent a letter to Hestle’s father, the Rev. Roosevelt Hestle Sr., that read in part, “it is with deep regret that I must officially notify you of the termination of the missing status of your son, Colonel Roosevelt Hestle, Jr., since he can no longer be presumed to be alive.”

The declaration of death left Hestle’s family with many unanswered questions, not least of which, where were his remains?

“He was so precious,” said Hill-Taylor, who has lived in Eureka since 1959. “My mother never seemed to be the same, she never seemed to recover from losing her oldest.”

It would take almost 52 years before the Hestle family got some form of closure when in June 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency notified the family that human remains that had been recovered by a farmer in an area near where Hestle’s plane went down, had been positively identified as having belonged to Hestle.

Hill-Taylor said that she and her then-husband, Willie T. Hill, were on vacation in 1966 when she learned the news her brother had been shot down.

“We heard on the radio that a pilot had been shot down in North Vietnam and I remember I told my husband, ‘I hope that wasn’t Hess,’ ” Hill-Taylor said. “We would watch the TV news when POWs were returned to see if he was among them.”

With no easy answers forthcoming from the Air Force, Hill-Taylor turned to then North Coast Congressman Don Clausen, a World War II veteran and Navy carrier pilot who flew F-4U Corsairs between 1944-45. Hill-Taylor said Clausen took the matter to heart after he learned Hestle had been listed as MIA.

“I thought the world of Don Clausen,” Hill-Taylor said. “He did everything he could to help find my brother.”

Hill-Taylor said frustration over the fact that her brother’s body had not been found grew as the years went by. By 1968, anti-war protests had occurred in cities across the country and Hill-Taylor said she remembers them well and remembers thinking to herself at the time, “what did we accomplish sending my brother over there? I was resentful, very resentful.”

Hestle was born in Florida in 1928 and enlisted in the Air Force in 1950 after graduating from Bethune-Cookman University in Dayton Beach, Florida. He served in the Korean War and was then assigned to Vietnam before he was shot down in 1966.

In 2015, the Joint Forensic Review team examined possible human remains that had been found by a Vietnamese farmer near the site of Hestle’s downed plane and the remains were turned over to the POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

A subsequent investigation that included DNA tests of the remains by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover, AFB, concluded, “the laboratory analysis and the circumstantial evidence available establish the remains as those of Col. Roosevelt Hestle Jr., U.S. Air Force.”

The Air Force Honor Guard from Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C., rendered military honors as Hestle’s casket was transported from the Old Post Chapel at Fort Myers to the graveside location in Arlington National Cemetery.

An Air Force band, color guard, firing detail and bugler joined a chaplain and Brigadier General Kathleen A. Cook who accompanied the casket during its journey to Arlington.

The flag that was laid across Hestle’s casket was presented to his daughter, Corda Hestle, at the end of the ceremony. Hestle’s wife, Constance, never remarried, “she said Hess spoiled her and no other man could take his place,” Hill-Taylor said of her sister-in-law.

Constance Hestle died in early 2018 not long after she learned the remains of her husband had been found and identified.

Dan Squier can be reached at 707-441-0528.