These news releases are in date order.

MARCH 23, 2005
Uncle Mac comes home
He was KIA in vietnam, but Mac Miller still has a story to tell.

BY BROOKE HATFIELD

Dana Fisher was raised on "The Dukes of Hazzard," "Looney Tunes" and stories about her uncle Mac. Her mother, Sandra Miller Keheley, told young Dana about her uncle Mac. He used to light up rooms and hearts, she told Dana. He joined the Navy as a corpsman at 16. He was brave.

Three men came to Dana’s door on Feb. 19. Two of them represented the U.S. Navy Office of Mortuary Affairs, The U.S. Navy Casualty Office, and the third was a petty officer who was her uncle’s equivalent rank. They came to tell Dana that, after 38 years of being listed as MIA in Vietnam, HM3 Malcolm Thomas Miller was coming home.

•••

Dana’s uncle Mac was a ladies man.

‘He had a girlfriend for every hour of the day," said Sandra. "He’d have one for breakfast and one for break and one for afternoon break."

He used to keep a bottle of Brut in the dashboard of his family’s green 1963 Plymouth Valiant, just in case he needed to splash on more during the course of the evening. If he had two dates scheduled for one night, he’d rush home to change between them. But of the many women in his life, it was his sister Sandra who arguably felt most loved by the dashing Mac Miller. Fellow redheads, they were only two years apart in age.

"He was another half of me," Sandra said. "He’s the one that made everybody laugh. He’s the one that eased everything. The middle child is the one that’s the comedian and tries to make things right."

The summer after Sandra’s first year in nursing school, she returned home to a sheet with "Welcome Back, Sandy" emblazoned across the front and three bottles of champagne. When Sandra told Mac that she didn’t want to tell their father that she had actually failed two classes, he had a solution— "Tell Dad after he drinks some champagne."

•••

When Mac was 16, he went joy-riding in a car that he didn’t know was stolen. Since he was the oldest person in the car, he took the bulk of the punishment, and the judge presiding over his hearing gave him two options— serve his country or go to jail. Mac chose the former, entering Navy corpsman school in August of 1964.

Sandy was still in nursing school at the time, and she remembered how her brother’s new military career didn’t change her relationship with him.

"He was writing letters to me bragging about the things he could do,," Sandra said. "He was damn proud of what he was doing, and he was damn proud to lord it over me." Mac seemed to enjoy training to be a medic, and mentioned to Sandra that he wanted to be a doctor once he left the service.

He went on to serve on the U.S.S. Repose for a year, giving vaccinations to soldiers about to depart for Danang. In 1966, he was reassigned to the Marines as a medic to the 3rd Recon Alpha Company. In order to get out of service earlier, Mac elected to go on reconnaissance missions. He was a "Kiddy Cruiser": he went into the Navy at 16 and would have been out by the time he was 20. At the time of Mac’s death, "he had something like three weeks left," Sandra said.

•••

The JPAC report delivered to Dana’s door tells her the story of HM3 Miller’s last hours on earth. How he and six other men were on a reconnaissance patrol code-named Team Breaker near a U.S. Marine base in Khe Sanh on May 9, 1967. How they set up camp that night on a hill near the border of South Vietnam. How the North Vietnamese Army attacked them, killing 2nd Lt. Heinz Ahlmeyer, Sgt. James N. Tycz and Lance Cpl. Samuel A. Sharp within two hours of the battle’s initiation. How Dana’s uncle Mac died from fragmentation grenade wounds while the Vietnamese continued to fire on his comrades through the night and into the morning.

•••

"I’ve always wondered if he was still really out there," Dana said. "Mom’s pretty much kept him alive with us all these years."

Although he was classified MIA/KIA, and although the three survivors of Team Breaker saw Mac die in the early morning hours of May 10, his family still harbored hopes of his eventual, if unlikely, return.

"My sister said it right," Sandra said. "She had always dreamed of him finding a Vietnamese women and having 25 Vietnamese children running around."

After two attempts to evacuate the members of Team Breaker by helicopter, the remaining men, riflemen Clarence Carlson and Carl Friery and Pfc. Steve Lopez, were rescued. But because of the intense firefight at the time of their extraction, recovering the remains of the four slain men wasn’t possible for nearly 38 years.

"There was never any closure there without the actual remains," she said. "We had this mystic uncle out there somewhere and we knew all about him as a kid."

In 2003, a joint United States/Socialist Republic of Vietnam team excavated an alleged burial site, a hill that locals claimed was haunted. Hill 665, as the JPAC report refers to it, yielded 31 disarticulated teeth fragments and minute bone fragments. Dental records showed that eight of those teeth belonged to HM3 Malcolm Thomas Miller.

•••

Although the remains are currently at a military facility in Hawaii, the four men will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on May 10, the 38th anniversary of their death. Sandra and Dana said that they are looking forward to meeting the families of the men who died that day with Mac, who was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and Vietnamese Military Merit Medal and Gallantry Cross with Palm.

Dana has become a standard-bearer of sorts, using the Internet to track down Mac’s military colleagues and others who might be able to tell her more about the uncle who captivated her as a child.

Her life is full of piles of paper— stacks of photographs of her uncle, hundreds of photocopies of government documents and newspaper clippings, page after page of correspondence with people connected to her uncle Mac and his days in Vietnam. One of the pieces of paper in one of the piles, a letter written by Sandra, has the following remembrance: "When I think of my brother, I see him against the rail on the U.S.S. Repose. He has on a stark white T-shirt and his flaming red hair is carefully combed. He will never grow old like the rest of us."

Posted on Mon, Mar. 21, 2005

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Burial scheduled at Arlington for soldier killed in Vietnam

Associated Press

MILWAUKEE - The four siblings of a Milwaukee Marine killed in Vietnam 38 years ago when he picked up an enemy grenade to save the lives of his men will gather May 10 at Arlington National Cemetery for a burial with military honors on the anniversary of his death.

James Neil Tycz's remains had been left at the scene near Khe Sanh when the survivors were evacuated on a helicopter, and he was listed as "Killed in Action-Body Not Recovered" until American military casualty teams returned to the spot decades later.

"I'm glad it's over," said Peter Carey Tycz of Franklin, who was four years younger than his brother and joined the Marines because of him.

James Neil Tycz, who served in Company A in the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion of the 3rd Marine Division, was awarded the Navy Cross for the incident. The award is one notch below the Medal of Honor.

He was leading a patrol in enemy-controlled mountainous territory, when he and his men were detected by a North Vietnamese Army unit of as many as 50 men, according to the Navy Cross citation.

When a grenade landed near a wounded Marine, Tycz ran toward it, picked it up and threw it. But the grenade traveled only a short distance before exploding, killing Tycz.

His siblings were notified last month that three teeth that were later recovered from the site were from their brother.

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Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, http://www.jsonline.com

The letter Sgt. Tycz's parents received the day before he died

Dear Mom and Pop,

Hi! It’s very close to “black out” (all lights off), but before that time, I just have to write an overdue letter to the best parents in the world, and anywhere else. After being with the 2nd platoon for very close to a year I have been transferred. I am now the platoon sergeant and second in command of an entire reconnaissance platoon…The change is a little strange, of course, but I know once my men and myself get used to each other, everything will be just great. They’re a platoon of good marines and I plan on keeping them that way, with my newly acquired “Sarge’s growwwl!” (Would you believe—my squeak??!) Since my last patrol, Khe Sanh has kept me pretty busy.

About a week ago a couple infantry platoons discovered enemy fortified positions in our front yard. From our different “recon” patrols, we have known that there were many numerous enemy troops in our area; the two infantry platoons have been hit extremely hard, which has set off a large operation to our west and surrounding terrain. The battle has been going on for, it seems, eternity.

Most of the contact has been with North Vietnamese Communists, very well armed, well trained and in positions that make the defensive fortifications of World War II look like sand castles.

Due to all available helicopters being used for resupply and “med evacs” (flying out the killed and wounded in action), my patrol is on standby, waiting for choppers to insert us into our area to be patrolled.

We’ve been sand bagging our living quarters for quite some time and are not really minding this work. Our base is frequently hit by enemy mortars during the night.

The most unpleasant detail is acting as stretcher bearers at the airfield.

An afternoon participating in evacuating the dead and wounded has made me learn to hate: Demonstrators (gutless traitors is what they are); a minority who actually supply the enemy with blood and supplies, and those overprotecting parents who put boot camp drill instructors in jail because they try to turn their boys into men that can stand up to a hard core enemy.

Our company has been hit pretty hard, too, with casualties; 100% casualties in one of our eight man patrols hit by mortars while waiting for helicopters to pick them up….

Mom and Dad, I have had opportunities to write sooner than tonight but I hope you will understand that writing about an unpopular war like this one is not easy….

I want to say what I think and feel, but I do not want to cause worry at home.

None of us here like this war, especially after seeing a friend or a fellow Marine wounded or worse, but the majority (I hope for the sake of democracy) believe in fighting off Communist aggression in a weakened country.

I firmly believe in bombings in North Vietnam of supply plants and arsenals. Why fight a trooper as well supplied and armed as these North Vietnamese are?

Unless we prove to the Communists that we do mean business, I feel that this war can and will last a long time.

I had an interruption just now. Our lieutenant passed me the word that we go in at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. None of us want to go, but that’s our job and I pray I will never fail to do it….

Your Marine Son,

Neil

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Dallas Morning News
February 24, 2005

Marine Died Hero In Vietnam, Family Told

After 38 years, remains of sergeant killed in Vietnam positively ID'd

By Paul Meyer, The Dallas Morning News

PLANO – James Neil Tycz died a hero May 10, 1967, when a hand grenade exploded near his face in Khe Sanh, Vietnam.

Of his seven-member reconnaissance patrol team, only three Marines survived the early-morning firefight with the North Vietnamese army, according to military records. The others were buried under elephant grass on Hill 665, unrecovered but not forgotten.

On Wednesday, over a kitchen table in Plano, Sgt. Tycz's family heard the news they've waited 38 years for: The sergeant's remains – three teeth – had been located in Vietnam and positively identified. He was coming home.

"It was a mixed blessing for me," said Phillip Dale Tycz, Sgt. Tycz's brother who lives in Plano with his wife, Ruth.

"I was happy they could find the remains so he could finally be repatriated. But I also knew some of my family would have a very mixed reaction. They put it behind them and didn't want to know anything else."

Mr. Tycz, heading family efforts to keep abreast of the search for their relative in recent years, was first notified of the discovery Jan. 10 by telephone. Hattie Johnson, head of the U.S. Marine Corps' POW/MIA Affairs office, flew in from Quantico, Va., to brief the family on details of the discovery.

The Search

The search for the four Marines buried on Hill 665 is a story of science, detective work and perseverance that began in 1991, when two Vietnamese entered a U.S. POW/MIA office in Hanoi saying they had access to the remains of 10 U.S. servicemen, including Sgt. Tycz, according to military records.

The two men never substantiated their claims, but a month later another Vietnamese made a similar assertion in Hanoi. He produced three teeth, one bone fragment and identification for Sgt. Tycz but left after being told of military policy not to pay for remains.

From 1993 to 1998, teams worked in Vietnam on six occasions in search of the men.

They found circumstantial evidence, evidence of a firefight, but no burial.

A break came in 2003 when a team returned to the hill and recovered several fragments of teeth and bone. Last year, an excavation of the site near the border of Vietnam and Laos was completed.

In all, 31 teeth and tooth fragments were found and used in a Hawaii laboratory to identify the four Marines.

Military officials met recently in Tennessee, Georgia and Washington state with the families of the three other Marines.

"So many people don't realize what the government does for these men and women," Mr. Tycz said Wednesday.

"They don't give up on them."

More than 1,800 Americans from the Vietnam era are still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, according to the most recent statistics. Of those, about 970 are still being actively pursued.

Navy Cross

Sgt. Tycz was 22 when he died. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the Navy's second-highest medal, for his actions on Hill 665.

A live grenade had landed near a wounded Marine. The sergeant moved toward it, picked it up and attempted to throw it back at the enemy.

The grenade exploded after a short distance and Sgt. Tycz fell, critically wounded.

In the coming weeks, his three teeth will be flown in from Hawaii and placed in a container inside a flag-draped silver metal casket. A full uniform will rest alongside it.

Sgt. Tycz's remains will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, per his family's wishes.

"He will be under full military escort, just like it happened yesterday," said Timothy Nicholson, assistant program director for Navy Mortuary Affairs.

In addition to his brother in Plano, Sgt. Tycz is survived by another brother, Peter Carey Tycz of Milwaukee; and two sisters, Rita Blount of Escondido, Calif., and Patricia Kriesher of Downey, Calif.

Just a day after he died, Sgt. Tycz's mother received a letter from him. In it, he wrote:

"I had an interruption just now. Our lieutenant passed me the word that we go in at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. None of us want to go, but that's our job and I pray I will never fail to do it. ..."

Friday, February 11, 2005
Marine to finally come home
SUNY to honor star athlete's memory
By Gabriel J. Wasserman

For the Poughkeepsie Journal

NEW PALTZ -- Nearly 40 years after he was killed on his first day of active duty, a Marine who left an enduring athletic legacy at SUNY Paltz can be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The remains of Second Lt. Heinz Ahlmeyer were identified in January from a tooth filling found at the site of a 1967 skirmish in Vietnam. The platoon commander was believed dead but listed as missing until the recently unearthed tooth was compared to dental records.

''As long as you don't know for sure, you always hold out hope,'' said his sister Thursday. The military informed Irene Healea last month that her brother's remains had been positively identified.

Asked if the news has brought closure, the Tennessee resident said she was ''coming around to that.''

Ahlmeyer died in the Quang Tri province, where his long-range reconnaissance patrol was hit unexpectedly by grenades and small arms fire. Rescuers with a helicopter were unable to save him and three comrades.

Maybe ''one day my brother would come walking through that door,'' Healea said she had always figured.

Perhaps he had amnesia. ''You hold onto these things,'' she said.

Memorial Trophy

The State University of New York at New Paltz held onto his spirit too. Awarded annually, the Heinz Ahlmeyer trophy honors an upper-class student's inspirational courage and dedication to team sports.

''He was just one of those guys who had to be the leader,'' said Al Miller, Ahlmeyer's soccer coach. ''He was a bull -- a brilliant competitor.''

Ahlmeyer played with a toughness and a passion that have become legendary, according to Miller, college officials and former teammates. He also played baseball and swam backstroke for SUNY New Paltz.

''He has been a symbol that I think the college will always be proud of,'' said Athletics Director Stuart Robinson, who presents the Ahlmeyer trophy at an annual banquet each year. When the award is given, Robinson added, ''You can hear a pin drop.''

The college plans to honor Ahlmeyer's memory at a special October ceremony that will include members of his 1965 soccer team.

The alumni weekend ceremony will commemorate the 40th anniversary of that team's state and Atlantic Coast regional championship victories, college spokesman Eric Gullickson said.

Assemblyman William Parment, a Chautauqua County Democrat, was the 1965 team manager and Ahlmeyer's friend.

''He was a great guy, big smile,'' Parment recalled Thursday. ''He was a weightlifter. He was in great physical condition. He had a lot of hustle. It still remains a shock, a guy who was so full of life.''

About a decade ago, Parment was asked to create a statewide day of POW-MIA recognition. He gained sponsors for a bill and spoke before the Assembly in Albany about it.

For the speech, Parment carried a list of the missing in his pocket. An advocacy group had supplied it, and Parment wanted the Assembly's official record to contain all the names.

At the time, he said, he did not know his former friend was among the missing. Ahlmeyer's name was on official memorials. Most people, including college officials, thought he was dead.

''I go to read it, and son of a gun, Heinz is the first name on the list,'' the assemblyman said. ''I got such a lump in my throat. I really couldn't talk for like a minute or more.''

Parment and Miller recalled a letter Ahlmeyer had sent from Marine Corps boot camp. Miller read it aloud to the team. In it, Ahlmeyer joked the war preparations were easier than Miller's pre-season training.

''We all had a laugh out of it,'' Miller said.

''It was pretty rigorous,'' Parment said of Miller's soccer camp. ''There was a lot of bonding.''

The identification of the remains reawakened sadness, Miller said, but ''I'm so glad he can come home.''

Richie Lotze, a member of the 1965 team, remembered welcoming Ahlmeyer to New Paltz in 1963. A native of Pearl River in Rockland County, Ahlmeyer spent a year at a community college before Miller recruited him to transfer.

''It's a pity he wasn't with us longer,'' said Lotze, a southern Dutchess County resident. ''It was like he was there and he was gone. He was well liked, well-remembered.''

Ahlmeyer's name is engraved on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, and a flagpole in Pearl River's Braunsdorf Park bears his name. The family never had a final resting place for him.

Following a series of military scheduling procedures and discussions with families of other dead soldiers found with Ahlmeyer, burial in the federal cemetery could happen this spring, Parment and Healea said.

Gabriel J. Wasserman can be reached at gwasserman@hvc.rr.com