Remember...
Larry Francis Lucas
1940-1966
"True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job anyhow, that's what courage is."
General Norman Schwarzkopf
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Remember...Larry Francis Lucas
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Larry Francis Lucas was born to Raymond Lucas and Jessie Crace Lucas in Ashland, Boyd County, Kentucky, on April 29, 1940. Larry had a brother, Nile Raymond, and a sister, Joann. At some point in his early childhood, the family moved from Ashland, Kentucky, to Marmet, Kanawha County, West Virginia.
The town of Marmet lies approximately 12 miles upriver from the city of Charleston along the banks of the Kanawha River. The community was renamed from Brownsville in 1900 for the local Marmet Coal Company, which had the name of its proprietors Edwin and William Marmet. Coal was the leading industry in the 1900s and the river access provided a means of transporting coal down river. ("Marmet, West Virginia," Wikipedia, accessed 9 May 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmet,_West_Virginia.) More than likely, Larry grew up playing in and around the river, hunting, fishing, and being the outdoor adventurous type of kid. Larry met his future wife, Martha Pritchard Lucas, while they were growing up. She was his childhood sweetheart, and they had three children: Mark, Melissa, and Andrea.
The Vietnam War started on the first of November 1955. It was fought between North Vietnam and their communist allies, opposed to the South's anti-communist allies, which included the United States. It was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam after their defeat in the First Indochina War, while the U.S. supported South Vietnam's military finances. South Vietnam's Viet Cong called for a guerilla war in the South, which developed into conventional warfare. Laos was then invaded by North Vietnam in 1958, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail was established to aid and supply the Viet Cong.
The U.S. joined the war to make sure communism didn't spread to South Vietnam and Asia. The U.S. sent 16,300 military advisors to South Vietnam in 1963. The U.S. had spent a total of $120 billion aiding the South, as well as giving the French $2.6 billion for support. 58,000 U.S. lives were taken, as well as an estimated two million Vietnamese during the span of 20 years. Both sides committed nearly five million troops to the war. The war heavily damaged the U.S. economy because the U.S. didn't want to raise taxes for war, which caused inflation, which also caused a weakness to the U.S. The war lasted from November 1, 1955, to April 30, 1973. (Vietnam War information summarized from "Vietnam War," History.com website, 29 October 2009, updated 28 March 2023, accessed 9 May 2023, https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history.)
Larry's father had been drafted during World War II, which may have influenced his son to pursue the military. Also, Larry had been studying forestry in college when the ROTC classes he took convinced him to pursue a career in the military. (A 1962 West Virginia University yearbook photo shows Larry as a member of Alpha Zeta fraternity.)
Larry joined the Army in 1962; as he was always a risk-taker, he chose the most dangerous paths possible in the Army—flight school, ranger school, airborne school, and eventually combat duty. (Background information in this biography is from a posting by Michael Robert Patterson, "In Honored Remembrance of Captain Lucas," Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website, 16 September 2002, accessed 2 May 2023, https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/31482/LARRY-F-LUCAS/.) He had a military occupation skill (MOS) of 1980—Fixed Wing Aviation Unit Commander. His rank was captain, and he flew the OV-1A Mohawk.
This fixed-wing plane was designed as an armed military observation and attack aircraft for battlefield surveillance and light strike capabilities. It had a twin turboprop configuration, and carried two crew members in side-by-side seating. The Mohawk was intended to operate from short, unimproved runways in support of United States Army maneuver forces. The Mohawk's mission would include observation, artillery spotting, air control, emergency resupply, naval target spotting, liaison, and radiological monitoring. ("Grumman V-1 Mohawk," Wikipedia, 30 April 2023, accessed 9 May 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_OV-1_Mohawk.)
| Captain Larry F. Lucas began his tour of duty in Vietnam on May 26, 1966. He was assigned to the 131st Aviation Company, 223rd Aviation Battalion, 17th Aviation Group, 1st Aviation Brigade. The 17th Aviation Group was stationed at Qui Nhon to provide aviation support in the II Corps Zone. |  |
Captain Larry Lucas and his co-pilot, Captain Joseph Kulmayer, flew an OV-1A Mohawk out of Hue Phu Bai Air Base on December 20, 1966. They were sent over the "Foxtrot" operations region in Laos on a mission to reconnoiter the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was known to be a Vietnamese supply trail. They were then hit by enemy fire around 10:20 a.m. While the plane was ablaze and diving, Lucas bravely followed the military's procedure and ordered Kulmayer to eject first. Kulmayer said that the last thing he saw was Larry's hand on the ejection handle. As the crew of another OV-1 watched, the aircraft entered a steep dive, crashed, and exploded. Other aircraft searched the area for a survivor, but with negative results. No parachute was seen, and no radio transmissions were heard from Lucas. (Additional background information from a further posting by Michael Robert Patterson, "God Bless Captain Lucas—Welcome Home," Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website, 26 October 2022, accessed 2 May 2023, https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/31482/LARRY-F-LUCAS/.)
Larry wrote to his wife every day, and Martha continued to get letters for two weeks after he had died. Larry had written his wife a letter that told her if she was reading the note, he must be dead. He wrote for her to get on with her life and be grateful for all the years they had together. Martha says, "He gave me the strength to have a new life." Larry was supposed to meet his wife on Christmas Day, and he was overdue for rest and recreation leave. She had her things packed, and she was ready to head out the door. The colonel who had to deliver the horrible news to Martha waited outside her door in the dark for two hours to ensure she hadn't left yet.
Between January 1990 and September 1999, four joint U.S.-Laos on-site investigations were led by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA). The JTF-FA was established to focus on achieving the fullest possible accounting of Americans missing as a result of the Vietnam War. Today it is known as the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (DPAA). Larry was declared Missing In Action (MIA) for 36 years before his military dog tags were spotted on a villager in Laos. After a second attempt, researchers were sent to the village and successfully located bone fragments in 1999. During two of these investigations, excavations recovered aircraft debris, pilot-related artifacts, and human remains. Captain Larry F. Lucas' remains were repatriated on September 20, 1999. Forensic scientists from the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii identified the remains as Larry's on April 26, 2002. ("Lucas, Larry Francis," Coffelt Database of Vietnam Casualties website, accessed 2 May 2023, http://www.coffeltdatabase.org/detreq2.php.)
On October 24, 2002, relatives of this Army pilot who perished in a plane crash in Laos during the Vietnam War thanked the U.S. military for tracking down his remains and arranging for an honored serviceman's burial after 36 years. Captain Larry Francis Lucas' daughter, Melissa Lucas-Condit of San Marcos, spoke to reporters at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar about her family's gratitude at the end of a decades-long ordeal. Her voice faltering, she described her and her siblings' "troubling passage from happy children with a brave father to confused kids, wondering why Daddy never came home."
Investigators had found the wreckage of Lucas' OV-1A Mohawk reconnaissance aircraft in a remote jungle four years previously. Equipment, personal items, and bone fragments inside it proved to be those of the long-missing flier. His daughter praised the government's persistence in providing closure for her family, most of whom live in the San Diego area. "All those men and women who stuck it out and excavated those fragments of [his] airplane, flight suit, survival kit, camera and wristwatch all knew those bits and pieces would breathe some margin of life back into him so he could take his final flight back home," she said.
Lucas' mother died soon after Army officials told her they had identified her son's remains. "I think she stayed on until she knew they had found him," Lucas-Condit told the San Diego Union-Tribune. Captain Lucas was one of 2,583 U.S. soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen unaccounted for after the Indochina War ended.
Larry's nephew, Mike Holmes, recalls spending a lot of time with him in his childhood on camping trips. Mike was a high school teacher, and he taught his students Larry's story in his lessons on the Vietnam War. Lucas' family took part in a memorial service at Vista Wesleyan Church in Vista, California. Mike had the honor to escort Larry's remains to the military memorial services. He mentioned, "It was absolutely the greatest honor afforded me my entire life." Larry's wife Martha said, "You know, when the rest of the world seemed to forget him…Mike kept his memory alive."
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Captain Larry F. Lucas will always be remembered for service and sacrifice to our country as he is memorialized at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., on Panel 13E, Line 64. He is also memorialized at the West Virginia Veterans Memorial located in Charleston, West Virginia. Since he was Missing In Action for 36 years, his name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at Honolulu Memorial located in Honolulu, Hawaii. When an individual's remains have been accounted for by the U.S. Department of Defense, a rosette is placed next to the name on the Wall/Tablet/Courts of the Missing to mark that the person now rests in a known gravesite. Captain Larry F. Lucas' remains were interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on November 1, 2002. |
According to The Virtual Wall website, Capt. Larry Francis Lucas received the following medals: the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, the National Defense Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, and the Vietnam Campaign Medal. ("Larry Francis Lucas," accessed 12 May 2023, http://www.virtualwall.org/dl/LucasLF01a.htm.)
Article prepared by Isobelle Rider, Hannah Drake, and MAJ (Ret) Brad McGee, George Washington High School JROTC
April 2023
West Virginia Archives and History welcomes any additional information that can be provided about these veterans, including photographs, family names, letters and other relevant personal history.