ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 6, 1997 TAG: 9702060021
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HICKORY, N.C.
SOURCE: LYN RIDDLE THE NEW YORK TIMES
PRIVATE ALLEN ADAMS was stationed near Arlington, Va., when he disappeared during the height of the Vietnam War. His remains were found Dec. 18, 1996.
For 30 years, Pfc. Allen L. Adams was branded a deserter, thought by the Army to be yet another soldier who had fled to avoid being sent to Vietnam. But six weeks ago, when workers in Washington, D.C., found bones in the rubble of a building they were demolishing, that easy presumption was undone: the remains were those of Adams, and the authorities now believe he was killed in the summer of 1967.
This weekend, Adams was buried here with full military honors beneath a leafless willow in a section of a country cemetery known as the Garden of Peace. His parents, Darrel and Elizabeth Adams, who retired to Hickory five years ago, wept softly as seven soldiers raised M-16s in a salute and a bugler played taps.
``It was a 30-year nightmare that just never ended,'' said Elizabeth Adams, 64. ``I always had kind of a hope in my heart, but I knew something terrible had happened to him. He was a good kid, and I miss him.''
Although the uncertainty is over, friends and family say many questions remain: Why was the body not discovered in all this time? Why did the Army not fully investigate Adams' disappearance? Why did the Army presume that he had deserted, especially since he had just re-enlisted?
The police in Washington, meanwhile, face their own puzzles as they investigate a homicide three decades old. The task is particularly daunting because records have been lost and investigators recovered only Adams' pelvic bone and one femur, encased in a pair of blue jeans. His dog tags and a wallet containing money were found in a pocket.
Private Adams was stationed at Fort Myer, in the Washington suburb Arlington, when he disappeared on July 31, 1967. His remains were found Dec. 18, 1996, in the rubble of a long-abandoned pool hall that was being torn down to make way for a new sports arena. Investigators believe that he died shortly after disappearing from the base.
Positive identification was made in January by comparing DNA from the remains with blood taken from Elizabeth Adams.
The case is like a trip back in time to a decade dominated by an unpopular war.
Allen Lee Adams was the eldest of four children. He enlisted in 1965, nine months after dropping out of high school in Palm Beach, Fla.
He served at Fort Knox, Ky., and in Korea before being assigned to Fort Myer, where he was learning to work in a field that was just emerging: data processing. Three months before he disappeared, he wrote a letter to his family and told them about the amazing new computers he was working on.
``He enjoyed life, and he enjoyed challenge,'' said his sister Beverly Peterson, who was 9 when he disappeared.
His family presumes that Adams had been in the building where his remains were found to play pool. The building, vacant since the 1980s, housed a pool hall and restaurant in 1967.
Investigators surmise that Adams' body was hidden in the attic. They are looking for leads in property tax records and have interviewed the property's owner at the time, but a fire has destroyed Army personnel records that would have helped them find soldiers who served with Adams.
The Adamses learned in August 1967 that their son, then 20 years old, was missing. Over the years, Army officials, still trying to track down a man they thought had deserted, visited the Adamses' West Palm Beach home to see if their son had shown up. Once, a soldier waited in line at the dress shop where Elizabeth Adams worked. When his turn at the cash register came, he said: ``Where's Allen? I know you know where he is.''
The Adamses never believed that their son had shirked his duty, yet they wished that he would surprise them by coming home unannounced, just as he had done many times before when he had leave. The Army discharged him in 1983.
``He was a jolly sort who was connected to his family,'' Peterson said. ``He even called my mother from Korea on Mother's Day. He didn't miss sending cards. He came home every Thanksgiving and Christmas. They thought he must be dead.''
Nevertheless, Elizabeth Adams spent 30 years searching for her son's face in crowds and scouring letters received at her church from missionaries overseas for her son's handwriting.
When word came that he was dead, Elizabeth Adams cried for hours.
``There was no hope left,'' she said.
As the family turned to leave the grave, David Adams, born two years after Allen Adams and now gray-haired and retired from a job as a firefighter, stopped and tucked a piece of paper inside his brother's steel-gray coffin.
It was a letter he had scratched out in the solitude of his pickup truck in the days before the funeral. He wrote about the times he had shared with his brother, the times he had tagged along. He, too, served in the Army, he told his brother. Now he wished he had tagged along one last time, on that night in the pool hall.
David Adams concluded his letter by saying, ``The Army might have given up on you, but your family never did.''
LENGTH: Medium: 93 linesby CNB