Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 14, 1995 TAG: 9508140098
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
Jill Dove Brcic has never known her father, but has lived in his shadow all her life.
She was a year old when Air Force Capt. James P. Dove left for Vietnam in December 1966. Months later, his plane went down in hostile territory and he was never heard from again.
``I always knew I had a father,'' Brcic said in an interview at her Virginia Beach town house. ``It's funny, even as a kid I would talk to him. I knew he was in heaven.
``I knew he was my angel.''
She and her family will say goodbye to him Wednesday at a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, where his remains and those of his co-pilot, Lt. Col. Boyd E. Squire, will be buried in a steel coffin under a marble stone.
The Doves came to terms with the death years ago, but hope the burial will provide them the long-awaited closure.
A former teacher, Dove had been in the Air Force for five years when he left to fly F-4 fighters in Vietnam. His family was staying in Bluefield while he was deployed. They were to be reunited with him after he completed 100 missions.
On that morning, Dove hugged Jill and handed her to her grandmother before leaving to go to the airport. ``Daddy gone,'' Jill said as he walked to the car.
Dove was sent to a base in Thailand. He wrote home often, sending snapshots of himself in uniform, standing in front of a fighter.
Months passed, and Dove grew anxious to return. It was taking a long time to get the 100 sorties. He switched to a squadron that flew both day and night missions to speed up his count. He was, he told them, a ``night owl.''
On July 12, 1967, Dove was on his 93rd mission, flying a modified T-28 trainer plane. He and Squire were flying low over the mountains, dropping bombs on convoys of trucks using the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Dove spotted a band of vehicles and radioed in the location, requesting permission to bomb the trucks in the dark. That was the last thing anyone had heard from him.
Military officials went to Bluefield to tell Dove's wife, Ginger, that her husband was missing. She knew he'd never return.
``I felt he was dead right away. I felt it in my heart he was gone,'' said Ginger Shrewsberry, who has since remarried.
Months turned into years, and the family still heard nothing.
In 1973, when the U.S. prisoners of war were released in Vietnam, Shrewsberry and her family watched on television as the stream of veterans stumbled home. Dove wasn't among them.
``I remember watching my grandmother and my mother standing there,'' Brcic said. ``That was the only time I saw my mom cry.''
In April 1973, the Defense Department declared Dove killed in action. A memorial was held a month later in the church next to Dove's family home.
Over the years, Pentagon officials contacted Shrewsberry about items they had found from the crash site: a plastic cigarette lighter that Dove probably used; a tarnished set of captain's bars; the heel of a boot.
Shrewsberry had gone back to school and gotten her teaching certificate. She'd remarried and moved to Roanoke and finally, Richmond.
``Time has a way of taking care of things,'' she said. ``You get to the realization that life does go on and if you don't get with it you'll get left behind.''
In 1992, the Defense Department officials notified Shrewsberry that they were moving the items from Vietnam to a laboratory in the United States to examine them.
On July 7, 1995, they went to Richmond to tell her that bone fragments and other evidence collected at the scene proved what had happened to Dove and Squire. The memorial was planned.
``This is an honor for him to be in Arlington,'' Brcic said. ``It's what I want for him.
``There's always going to be an opening there that's not going to close. There's always going to be an unknown for me. Not the unknown for what happened. The unknown of not knowing him.''
by CNB