ARLINGTON, Va. - On a chilly airport tarmac in Washington, D.C., the four daughters of Air Force Col. Francis Jay McGouldrick Jr. stood hand in hand yesterday, waiting for their father to come home. He'd been gone since Dec. 13, 1968, when he disappeared after a midair collision with another aircraft over Laos' Savannakhet province. His girls were ages 4 to 13 at the time. Since then, they've waited in a strange sort of purgatory, never certain that he was gone.
ARLINGTON, Va. - On a chilly airport tarmac in Washington, D.C., the four daughters of Air Force Col. Francis Jay McGouldrick Jr. stood hand in hand yesterday, waiting for their father to come home.
He'd been gone since Dec. 13, 1968, when he disappeared after a midair collision with another aircraft over Laos' Savannakhet province. His girls were ages 4 to 13 at the time. Since then, they've waited in a strange sort of purgatory, never certain that he was gone.
Delta Flight 938 from Atlanta touched down at 10:50 a.m. and slowly rolled up to Gate 19. The girls, now grown women with husbands, a combined nine children and a 6-month-old grandson, watched as their father's flag-draped casket was lifted off the aircraft and onto a conveyor belt, then carried solemnly by an honor guard of eight to a waiting hearse.
Onboard the plane, passengers watched, faces pressed against the windows of the MD-80 airliner. They had been told when they boarded that they would be bringing home a veteran, missing in action since the Vietnam War.
"It was an honor to see," said Sheila Weidman of Atlanta, who was on Flight 938.
On the tarmac, the McGouldrick women - now Melisa Hill, who lives 20 miles south of Portland, Ore.; Megan Genheimer of Dublin; Michele "Mitch" Guess of Dublin; and Marri Petrucci of Hilliard - kept watch, hand in hand.
"Daddy's home," Guess told her sisters as the casket was lifted off the plane.
Only after the honor guard had closed the hearse did they break ranks, collapsing into each others' arms, an embrace of four.
Their mother, Jacquelyn McGouldrick, died in 1980 at age 46. They are older now than their parents were when they died. "Our parents will forever be young in our eyes," Guess said. "They will never age."
Afterward, they filed back into the airport where they were greeted by Col. Kevin Murphy, who had accompanied McGouldrick's remains from Hawaii to Atlanta to Washington. It was the first time he'd escorted a fallen service member. He told the family he hoped that they would have some closure after so many years.
The McGouldrick women have lived through 45 years of "a question mark," Petrucci said. Learning with certainty that their father is gone has unleashed a flurry of big, mixed emotions: grief and relief, sadness and closure.
"There's relief, but yet it's so sad," Guess said. "It's so hard, but we're so thankful."
There was also joy, because they were together. Hours after their father's remains landed at the airport, they had planned for family pictures. With family members scattered across the country, it was rare for them all to be together.
Today, they'll attend a service at the Air Force Memorial in Arlington before heading to Arlington National Cemetery, where they will inter their father in the same grave where their mother rests. Some 56 family members have come to Arlington to say goodbye, traveling from destinations as far away as California, Texas, Utah and Oregon.
McGouldrick will be laid to rest 45 years to the day he went missing in a land thousands of miles away.
Home, his daughters say, at last.
jwehrman@dispatch.com