Kathleen Lavey

Lansing State Journal

The handwritten letter dated Feb. 12, 1962 is written in large, slanted script on pale-blue paper.

In it, U.S. Army Sgt. Melvin Lewis Hatt is updating his mother in Michigan on the next chapter of his military career:

“I will probably fly as I am due in Saigon-Vietnam 25 Feb. so am on a hurry-up special assignment, for sure,” he wrote.

Hatt, an Army Ranger with training in jungle warfare and communications, and 92 other Rangers finally left on March 16, on their way to train solders in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

They would never arrive.

Their plane – a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation chartered by the U.S. military from the Flying Tiger Line – disappeared without a trace over the western Pacific on March 16, en route from a refueling stop in Guam.

The most plausible working theory: an in-flight explosion.

The most interesting piece of speculation: Sabotage brought the plane down.

The most frustrating result for the crash victims' loved ones: The men are not considered casualties of war, despite the fact that they were on a military mission to Vietnam.

That means Hatt’s name and the names of the other Army Rangers on the plane do not appear on the polished black granite roster at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C.

But Hatt’s daughter, Donna Ellis of Haslett, and other relatives of those killed on that flight would like to change that.

“It snowballs downhill. If he’s not on the memorial in Washington D.C., he’s not on a memorial in Michigan. He’s not on a memorial in Ingham County,” Ellis said. “They should be.”

'He liked the military'

Melvin Lewis Hatt was born to Lewis and Alma Hatt on Dec. 13, 1925, in Lansing. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II and served on 16 different ships during the war. He was on the crew of the U.S.S. Marathon transport ship when it was struck by a one-man Japanese suicide submarine in Okinawa’s Buckner Bay on July 22, 1945.

His brother, Normand, five years younger, also would serve in the U.S. Navy.

After the war ended, Hatt mustered out of the Navy, but found himself adrift in the civilian world.

“He liked the military,” Ellis said. “Civilian life did not suit him.”

So he signed up for the U.S. Army. Hatt’s military career took him all over the world. He met his wife, Patricia, in Maine. She was a southern belle from Georgia, working for the USO. Donna was born in Paris; her sister, Sherri, in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where the family was living at the time of Melvin's assignment to Vietnam.

Sherri Owen and her husband, Herb, live in Eaton Rapids. She supports her sister’s quest to get their father’s name listed on the wall, but she was just a toddler when he died and has no personal recollection of him.

“I don’t really remember anything but what I was told,” she said. “There are a couple of pictures.”

Flight 739 went down between Guam and the Philippines. Controllers lost radio contact, and at least one ship in the vicinity reported seeing a bright flash that could have been an explosion. A 12-day air-and-sea search yielded no bodies or debris.

Ellis recalls the day that an Army chaplain and officer came to the door of their home in Sierra Vista, Arizona, to give her mother the news that Sgt. Hatt had died.

“I distinctly remember the servicemen coming to the door,” she said.

Her mother’s reaction: a breakdown. Patricia Hatt immediately called Normand and his wife, Laurene, for help. Donna came to live with them immediately. Sherri followed 22 months later, bringing the total number of kids in Normand and Laurene's family to six. Patricia died in 2006.

The girls sometimes asked Normand about his brother but learned not to push the issue too hard.

“What memories he had were wonderful, but he did start getting a little emotional,” Owen said.

He was crushed by losing his only sibling.

“He shared a little bit about that particular time and the fear and the upset,” she said. “He just felt like his world was blown to pieces.”

Normand, who died in 2014, did to try to learn more about his brother’s death, Owen said, and may have made his own attempts to have Melvin listed as a Vietnam casualty.

“He was always busy with a lot of things, and that was one of them,” she said. “If he had made attempts and hadn’t been able to make anything happen, then maybe there was a reason at that time.”

An exception

More than 58,300 names are listed on the Vietnam Memorial wall, a graceful V of black granite on a 2-acre site near the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Opened in 1982, it now gets 3 million visitors a year.

According to Department of Defense guidelines, those eligible to be listed on the monument include soldiers who served Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and designated coastal areas between 1959 and 1975 and died with 120 days of wounds, injuries or illnesses incurred in the combat zone.

Those who died later of PTSD-related illnesses or diseases related to Agent Orange or chemical exposure are excluded.

Hundreds of names have been added to the 58,000 on wall when it was unveiled. Technically, those who died in the crash of Flight 739 don’t count because it took place far from the combat zone.

At least one exception has been made: the names of 68 soldiers were added in by order of President Ronald Reagan in 1983. The Marines were on an R&R trip to Hong Kong when their plane crashed.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, is among those lobbying for another exception: to include 74 sailors from the destroyer U.S.S. Frank Evans. The ship sank after it was struck by an Australian aircraft carrier during a 1969 training exercise in the South China Sea, outside the designated combat zone.

Ellis has contacted the Army regarding the issue and also has appealed to Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan.

She isn’t sure where she will turn next. She may enlist a high-profile Vietnam veteran and a former prisoner of war.

“I’m thinking about copying everything I had and FedEx-ing the whole kit and caboodle to John McCain,” she said.

McCain's staff did not respond to an inquiry on the issue.

Melvin Hatt does have a memorial stone at Arlington National Cemetery, although there were no remains to bury beneath it. Ellis appreciates that, but will continue her quest.

"They deserve to be honored," she said. "They deserve to be recognized."

Contact Kathleen Lavey at (517) 377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @kathleenlavey.