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Loss haunts family of Delray Beach man
By LONA O'CONNOR
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Though it was 34 years ago, the widow still remembers even the quirky
details about the day a chaplain and a young captain came to her door.
It was 4 in the afternoon. The chaplain asked her to be kind to the young
captain because he had a difficult duty to perform. It was an odd request,
given the reason for their visit.
A FAMILY'S TRAGEDY: Arthur Sprott went to Vietnam on the promise that he
would be able to fly fighter jets. He had been there for about two months
when he died.
"I think he was just saying something to divert me," she said.
They told her what she had guessed: Her husband, Arthur Sprott, died when
his plane crashed on a rescue mission in Vietnam on Jan. 10, 1969, four days
after his 32nd birthday.
Born and raised in Delray Beach, Sprott was a Seacrest High graduate. The
oldest of five children, he was a hero and a father figure to his youngest
sister, Mary, who called him Lucky.
"I looked up to Lucky. He helped raise us," said Mary Paulsus, who lives in
Boca Raton.
Arthur Sprott attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study
engineering before enlisting in the Air Force. The son of an Air Force
pilot, he loved flying and flew as a test pilot and instructor. He went to
Vietnam on the promise that he would be able to fly fighter jets after a
stint as a bomber pilot.
He had been in Vietnam about two months when he died.
In a fog of grief, Betty Sprott, 31 years old and a widow, took on the task
of raising her children alone on $600 a month in survivor benefits.
"There was an allotment for taking care of the burial and funeral, but they
never brought him back," she said.
Friends introduced her to Alex Meri-Akri, an Air Force officer and engineer
who built roads in Vietnam. They married in December 1971.
Arthur Sprott Sr. made it his quest to bring home his son's body. His hopes
were raised when the Vietnam War ended, and he was presented with his son's
Silver Star at a 1985 ceremony in Veterans Park in Delray Beach. His son's
name is carved into a monument in the park.
But for all his efforts, official information was sketchy. The few details
the family got were from unofficial channels and never verified by the Air
Force.
"My father-in-law worked very hard to stimulate interest in finding him,"
said Betty Meri-Akri. "But after a few years, I decided to let him rest."
Arthur Sprott was flying support for a helicopter rescue mission when his
A1E Skyraider attack bomber crashed in Quang Nam province, in Vietnam's
central highlands, a narrow strip of land between Cambodia and the South
China Sea.
In a rescue mission, two A1s flew ahead, looking for signs of a downed
flier. Two other A1s escorted a rescue helicopter and could cover the
helicopter's landing with bombs, rockets and cannon fire against the enemy.
"They called them suicide missions," Paulsus said.
Flying out of Pleiku Airbase en route to the rescue, Sprott's plane was hit
by ground fire and crashed about 20 miles southwest of Da Nang, according to
the POW Network, which gathers information from government sources, families
and published reports.
Friends told Betty Sprott that her husband's plane emerged from a bank of
clouds and flew into a mountain. His parachute did not open. A rescue team
managed to recover his body, then lost it under attack by enemy forces.
Knowing so little still nags at Sprott's widow, causing her to wonder what
information was held back by the government.
Paulsus, however, decided not to press too hard for details.
"They have cautioned me about not getting too much information. It might be
too heartbreaking and graphic," Paulsus said.
Sprott Sr. died in 1991 without bringing home his son's body. Betty
Meri-Akri now lives in Fort Walton Beach near her eldest daughter, Michelle.
Her other two daughters, Cindy and Laurie, live in Boca Raton.
The Defense Department's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command contacts Meri-Akri
about three times a year.
"They went back to the place where Art went down, but they found absolutely
nothing," she said.
Next year, Meri-Akri, her husband and her three daughters plan to visit
Vietnam.
"I just want to go back and visit that country for a couple of weeks," she
said. "I'm not expecting to find anything. I just want to see that country
where I lost a part of my life."
Paulsus won't be joining them on the trip.
"I admit I'm still bitter. It's just me personally being around the
Vietnamese people. I'm not sure I could insulate myself."
Although his body was never recovered, Arthur Sprott's name lives on in
three places besides his family's memories: the monument in Veterans Park;
on Panel 35W, Line 67, of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington; and, along
with all 58,000 names from the memorial, etched on a microchip on the
Stardust spacecraft journeying around the sun.
John Waresh, a member of the A-1 Skyraider Association, contributed to this
story.
