Steven Hall says each day he has thought about his dad, Willis Hall, a 40-year-old airman from Broward County who was killed during the Vietnam War and whose remains weren’t recovered for decades.
Then came the phone call from the military — 57 years later — announcing that Willis Hall’s remains were finally accounted for. Scientists identified Willis Hall in March using DNA analysis and modern forensic techniques.
“I was awestruck,” Steven Hall, now 75, of Omaha, Nebraska, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
‘He’s my hero’
Willis R. Hall, a technical sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, lived in Broward, though his service led him and his family to stay in many locations: He found himself stationed in Korea, Topeka, Kansas, and Puerto Rico, his son said.
Hall’s recorded home address was in Hollywood. He was brought to Florida by his wife, who grew up on her family’s sod farm in Davie.
Steven Hall said his father was a mentor in the Air Force with 17 years of experience in the military.
He recalled when his family lived in a mobile home about 10 feet wide and 50 feet long in Topeka, Kansas, and 27 airmen showed up for one Thanksgiving — they had to eat in shifts.
“Word got out that, ‘Hey, you want to go someplace and rest and relax? Go to Hall’s,’” he said. “He’s my hero, and not just because he gave his life for the country, but because of the man he was and the things that he taught me.”
Sent on a mission
In 1968, Willis Hall was one of 19 men assigned to a “tactical air navigation” radar site on Phou Pha Thi, a remote mountain in Laos.
On March 11, 1968, Vietnamese commandos overran the site in Laos with grenades and mortars, and the American men sought safety on a narrow ledge atop the mountain.
A helicopter was able to rescue eight of the men, but Hall was killed in action and unable to be recovered.
Steven Hall was 18 and had just joined the U.S. Navy and began his training in San Diego when his mom called to say his dad died, he recalled. He said his father’s assignment was a secret mission, so his family didn’t know where his father had been until then. He had to make a choice: return home to his mother and sister, or stay in boot camp.
“I talked to mom, and I told her, ‘If I come home, we’re just going to grieve together, and it’s not going to change anything,’” Hall said.
Seeking answers
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency specializes in finding and identifying lost soldiers, traveling abroad as part of its recovery efforts.
Earlier this year, the agency excavated a site at Phou Pha Thi, the remote mountain in Laos, recovering more bone material and human remains. Scientists identified Willis Hall, in what Steven Hall called a “remarkable process.”
He said he has toured the DNA lab, where three scientists must each independently find a match between the remains and the person potentially being identified.
Through the years, the government has performed multiple search operations, including pursuing leads from witness interviews and using aerial survey analysis, to find all of the missing men from the mountain.
Previously, the agency was successful in identifying the remains of Sgt. Patrick L. Shannon, according to a news release. Shannon was 32 and joined the Air Force from Oklahoma.
Another man, Sgt. David Price, was identified last year after the agency discovered unexploded military weapons and bone material from the mountain in Laos. Price, 26, entered the Air Force from Washington.
A ‘sense of relief’
Steven Hall said his family was originally told in 1968 that none of the men survived the mission his father was on.
When they did learn about the helicopter rescue decades ago, Hall said his mother, Mary Hall, began pressing the government for more information with the belief that her husband might’ve been alive or that — at the very least — his remains could be found.
Mary Hall was quoted in a Kansas newspaper, The Salina Journal, around 1996 after attending the funeral service for one of the men whose remains were recovered almost 28 years after the incident on the mountain.
“I can just imagine the sense of relief she must have felt to be able to put it down,” she told The Journal at the time, referring to the wife of the late airman. “I can’t put it down. I just can’t.”
She died two years later.
Now that Willis Hall’s remains were found, he soon will receive a proper funeral.
Steven Hall said Mary Hall is buried in Kansas, where his father was born and where his funeral in September will take place.
A rosette will be placed next to his name at the Courts of the Missing at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii and on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in D.C. to indicate he has been found, according to a news release.
Steven Hall said he’s relieved.
“He’s coming home,” he said. “We always had hope that somehow he might have survived that battle on the top of the mountain, but there’s not a day that I never thought of my father.”
“I cannot express the amount of gratitude I have for the DPAA and the job they do in trying to get our people back home,” Hall said. “They truly believe ‘No man left behind,’ and that’s what they’re doing.”
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