Published: May 26, 2008 10:01 pm      

Sister of Vietnam POW-MIA seeks closure

MADAMS CREEK — Dorothy Miller trudged up the neatly trimmed embankment Monday inside Restwood Cemetery, bearing the familiar black-and-white POW-MIA flag, her hopes heightened by a revelation that a plane, dogtags and body uncovered by a Vietnamese farmer might be those of a brother, missing four decades after an ill-fated combat mission.

Col. Henry Tipping was a last-minute replacement for a pilot when he embarked on a mission in what then was North Vietnam.

His plane clipped off some trees and rolled over, and one report indicated the aircraft exploded, Miller recalled during a Memorial Day ceremony.

“They put him on the MIA-POW list, and to this day, we haven’t had any closure to this thing,” the Hinton resident observed.

Yet, within the past year, her hopes have been raised, thanks to research undertaken by a son, retired Army Maj. Terry Miller, now the ROTC instructor at Dothan (Ala.) High School.

Through his efforts, it was learned that a farmer in North Vietnam discovered an airplane, a body, a nickel, a watch and dogtags.

“My son has all this information, and has a picture of the dogtags,” Miller said. “You can see the ‘Tipping’ name on the dogtags. My son got all this information and sent it to Washington. They’re looking into this. The farmer that found the body buried it. But it’s over in the northern part, so they have to wait to get permission to go there and recover the remains.”

Before the identification process can occur in Vietnam, however, Mrs. Miller noted, permission must come from her brother’s next-of-kin, a daughter named Charlene Huffman of Tampa, Fla.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take until they get all this together,” she said. “But Washington is working on it.”

Mrs. Miller’s patriotism is well defined across her family.

A native of Pottsville, Pa., she met her husband, Robert, during World War II, when he served with the 95th Army Division and was wounded while fighting in Sarlat, France.

“He brought me to West Virginia and we were married here,” Mrs. Miller said, with a huge smile. “We’ve been married 62 years. He got the Silver Star. I’m very proud of him.”

Miller, now 86, spoke proudly of his outfit, which regained control of Metz, France, earning respect from the Germans, who named his soldiers “The Iron Men of Metz.”

Her father served in World War II. One brother disappeared in a Vietnam mission and another served 32 years as an MP. Her husband and all three of their sons wore a military uniform, one of whom was in Vietnam when the brother’s plane went down.

“Every one of them was a volunteer,” she said.

Now that positive news has come with regard to her brother, Mrs. Miller acknowledged this Memorial Day gave her more reason to be thankful.

“We might get closure now,” she said. “Our son down in Dothan thinks so.”