Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 28, 1994 TAG: 9409280062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SALLY STREFF BUZBEE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
It took their mother, dragging her down into alcoholism and depression.
When she shot herself four years ago, with the black and white POW-MIA flag flying outside the house, her rosary draped over her husband's POW bracelet, they decided it must end.
Hard as it was, guilty as it made them feel, the time had come to declare that their father, the nation's last Vietnam prisoner of war, whereabouts unknown for 29 years, was dead.
Last week, at the children's request, the Air Force changed Shelton's status from prisoner of war to killed in action. Next Tuesday, his children will gather at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington to place his name on their mother's gravestone there.
``It was for our own sanity, for our own futures,'' John Shelton, 38, said, staring at the photo of his Dad climbing into a plane.
``It's hung over us for so long.''
But on his face are the same confusion and guilt, the same feeling of inadequacy, that bedeviled his mother for 25 years.
Charles Shelton would now be 62. He was shot down over Laos on his 33rd birthday, April 29, 1965. He parachuted onto a ridge and radioed that he was in good shape. A rescue helicopter got within sight but had to pull back when mists swallowed the ridge.
Marian Shelton was told six days later that villagers had reported him captured by Laotian forces.
Years dragged on, but Marian Shelton seemed never to waver. She traveled to Laos, talked to villagers, showed them Shelton's picture. She traveled the United States as spokeswoman for POWs.
In the early 1980s, she fought the Pentagon over changing the status of many POWs. Other servicemen were declared dead or missing in action; the Air Force agreed, as a symbol, to keep Shelton listed as the sole POW.
But such symbolism was taking an internal toll on Marian Shelton, and her children knew it.
She became more cynical, viewing government officials as liars. Her children share that distrust and also resent the people who ``would call Mama and get her all riled up, make her crazy telling her these wild rumors,'' John Shelton said.
One rumor had it that the CIA had rescued Charles Shelton in the late 1960s, then handed him back to preserve the U.S. government's secret war in Laos. Other callers said he was in a re-education camp near Hanoi, or was living in northern California with another wife.
``She'd be going along just fine for six months or so ... and then somebody would call her with some crazy rumor, and she'd be off again,'' her son says.
When she killed herself, she wrote in a note to her children, ``I have done all I can.''
Her children feel the same.
by CNB