Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991 TAG: 9102030194
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DON TERRY THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: NEWAYGO, MICH. LENGTH: Medium
"She's been in the gulf since October, and she was trying to be upbeat when she called," a family friend, Gregory Tornga, said Saturday. "She's a great kid. Outgoing. Strong. That's what we're holding onto - her strength."
He sighed deeply and fell quiet for a moment as birds sung in oak and ash trees wrapped with yellow ribbons.
"She was very positive about what she was doing and why she was there," he said. "The family and I believe we should be there. And we know where there is war, there is death."
At 8:30 Thursday night, Capt. James Holliday, an Army family assistance officer in Michigan, knocked on the door of Leo and Joan Rathbun's home and told them their 20-year-old daughter was missing.
A driver in the 233rd Transportation Company, based in Fort Bliss, Texas, she and Spc. David Lockett, 23, were driving a heavy flatbed truck in a two-vehicle convoy on the Tapline Road, near the Kuwaiti border.
According to reports from Holliday and from military officials in the Persian Gulf, their truck became lost, then stuck, and it came under small-arms fire.
When a Marine rescue team arrived, the two soldiers and their weapons were gone; some gas masks and bedrolls remained.
Rathbun-Nealy is the first female U.S. soldier ever to be listed as missing in action.
Tornga said Capt. Holliday returned to the Rathbuns' hilltop home Friday night, but had no new information.
The Rathbuns have gone into seclusion. They gave one interview to a local television station early Friday, but have said nothing else publicly.
"They're doing as well as can be expected," Tornga said. "They're taking it one day at a time."
Melissa Rathbun-Nealy joined the Army two and a half years ago, shortly after graduating from Creston High School in Grand Rapids, about one hour south of here.
She grew up in Grand Rapids, where both her parents were schoolteachers. (Both are now retired; they moved to Newaygo, a popular area for hunting and fishing, two years ago.)
She was married briefly but is now divorced.
Tornga said Rathbun-Nealy joined the Army for adventure and to earn money for college. "She had everything to look forward to," he said. "The Army was a starting block for her."
Tornga's wife, Mary, grew up with Rathbun-Nealy. They were more like sisters than friends, he said. As girls they always argued about who was stronger.
One day when Rathbun-Nealy was home on leave, the argument resumed.
Rathbun-Nealy put her friend in a tight headlock and said, "You can't do what you used to do; I'm in the Army now."
by CNB