It was on Mother’s Day in May, 1970, that Anna Teran last heard about her son.
Refugio "Tom" Teran, a 20-year-old from Westland, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, was a specialist in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division stationed at a support base in South Vietnam. His mother had fretted about him before he left, as many others did during the Vietnam War.
Anna’s fears came true on Mother’s Day, when word came that her son was missing in action and presumed dead after Viet Cong forces overran his base on May 6, 1970 – two days before Mother’s Day, and two days before Tom Teran turned 21.
"He said before he left: ‘Ma, don’t cry, maybe I’ll be a hero, and I’ll be buried in Arlington,’" Anna Teran, 76, said last week. "He was just joking, but I said, ‘Don’t joke.’"
Last week, her son’s words became a reality, as Refugio Teran and private first class Larry Kier, both of the 101st Airborne, were interred in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, April 19 – 31 years, 11 months and 13 days after they died.
It was a great relief, Anna Teran said: she had been praying she would find out what happened to her son before she died. This year, her prayers were answered.
"It means another family has answers, and we have another of our men back home," said Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the Arlington-based National League of POW/MIA Families. "Our purpose is to get the people who served our country home, alive or dead, whenever possible." Griffiths’ brother, a pilot, is still missing after flying a mission over Vietnam.
Members of MIA/POW groups at the burial were quick to point out, though, that many other mothers are still wondering – there are over 78,000 Americans missing in action from the wars of the 20th Century, more than 1,900 still missing from Vietnam.
"I can’t forget there’s a lot of parents who don’t know where their sons are," Anna Teran said. "I know what it is to lose a child. I buried three others. But I know we did all we could for them. It’s not the same if you sit by their side. He was on the other side of the world."
<b>FUNERAL SERVICES</b> for Teran and Kier started in the memorial chapel at Fort Myer, about half full with the 150 or so friends and family members of Kier and Teran, coming from Kentucky, Texas, Michigan and Mexico.
"I think 60 percent if the plane was full" of Tom Teran’s mourners, Anna Teran said. "I was born in Michigan, just like my son. My husband was born in Louisiana, but he has a lot of family from Texas and a lot from Michigan."
"This occasion is a homecoming," said Tom Taylor, "These men are home at last from a war long past." Taylor, another member of the 101st Airborne, said the funeral fulfilled two purposes. It brought home two American soldiers. "This does us honor, as it completes the unswerving purpose of America, to recovery, if possible, every soldier missing in action," he said.
But the funeral also brought answers to the Kier and Teran families, said Lt. Col. James Ma, an Army chaplain. "Surely every mother’s prayer is that her son returns from war," he said. "But for the last 32 years, these families have had to celebrate Mother’s Day without Larry, and without Tommy."
It may have been an end to questions, said 84-year-old Refugio Teran, father of the fallen soldier. But it didn’t mean the end of his wife’s grief. "She’s been waiting for closure for 32 years," he said. "She should be ready to accept it, but I don’t think she’ll ever be."
<b>"YOU MAKE YOUR</b> own stories," Anna Teran said. "I told myself, Tommy ran away."
Kier’s mother had just as hard a time dealing with the loss of a son. "His mom’s last words were, ‘My son is coming home," Teran said.
Every week he was stationed at the base where he died, Tom Teran received a package from his mother, a box filled with 30 pounds of oatmeal, canned fruit and sugar, which he passed on to a Vietnamese family he had befriended.
When she learned that her son was missing, Anna Teran consoled herself, making up a story where he sought refuge with the family he had befriended, growing old and having children in Vietnam.
"I told myself he had amnesia, that Tommy’s coming home," she said. "Well, now Tommy’s home."
<b>ANNA TERAN HELPED</b> hasten her son’s homecoming, Marty Eddy said. Eddy, president of the Michigan POW committee, said she and Teran had been at a conference that the National League of POW/MIA Families held in Washington in 1991, that proved to be a turning point in the cases of Larry Kier and Tom Teran.
An Army general briefed conference-goers on operations in North Vietnam, searching for the remains of downed pilots. But that was not the kind of operation Anna Teran wanted to hear about, Eddy said.
Most recovery efforts in Vietnam, up to 1990, had centered on the sites of downed aircraft, not on personnel lost in ground combat. "I think Anna had reached the limit of her patience," Eddy said. "She went out to the lobby and stopped the general. She said, ‘What about South Vietnam? what about ground sites?’"
Teran secured a promise, that a new search would begin for her son on the ground, and a few months later, a recovery team was on the ground.
There was no intentional neglect of men lost on the ground, Griffiths said. It’s just easier to find where pilots and helicopter crews died. "If you have a person who’s alive, where did he go? If he was killed, where did they bury him?" she said. "I always feel especially fortunate when ground cases are accounted for, but they’re especially difficult."