Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 24, 1990                   TAG: 9004240681
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HIS FAMILY REMEMBERS MARINE'S LAST MISSION

It was May 12, 1980 - a private ceremony that followed days of uncertainty and politics that centered on the return of his body to the United States from a country 6,000 miles away.

On April 25 of that year, Harvey and seven other members of an aborted secret mission had died in an Iranian salt desert.

Had the mission been successful, they would have freed and brought back home 52 hostages being held at the American Embassy in Tehran.

It was not successful. Three of eight rescue helicopters broke down. Harvey, a 1976 Patrick Henry High School graduate, died when a transport plane and a helicopter collided.

The aborted raid killed eight young Americans and destroyed any chance that Democratic President Jimmy Carter would be elected for a second term the following November.

Shortly after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981, the 52 hostages were released and flown home.

There was criticism of the way the raid was handled and of its tactics, but Marine Sgt. John Davis Harvey, a specialist in helicopter electronics, and seven other servicemen became untouchable heroes.

They also escaped the irony of the release of the 52 people they had tried to free.

In Arlington National Cemetery, there is a plaque honoring the three Marines and five members of the Air Force who died in the desert 10 years ago.

At Roanoke's Patrick Henry High School, Harvey's name lives on in a scholarship established soon after his death.

And 10 years later, John and Jean Harvey, the sergeant's parents, and other members of the family will be at the plaque in Arlington for a ceremony Wednesday marking the 10th anniversary.

Jean Harvey said the service is sponsored by No Greater Love, a humanitarian organization.

"I'm so grateful that they're holding this service," she said.

It is comforting to know, she said, that her son and seven other servicemen "are not just being forgotten."

"I was just thinking this morning," Jean Harvey said, "that it's been 10 years, but it just seems like yesterday."

A spokesman for No Greater Love said retired Ambassador Bruce Laingen, who was charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran when it was stormed and the hostages captured, will attend the remembrance ceremony.

He said six of the other hostages also will join family members at the ceremony.

Jean Harvey said she has attended other remembrance ceremonies at Arlington.

This week, the Rev. Harry Gamble, former pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in which the sergeant was active, remembered Harvey as "just a delightful little boy . . . a very small boy."

At a memorial service for the sergeant in May 1980, Gamble had read from Paul's second letter to Timothy:

"I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness."