Marblehead rededicates tree in honor of pilot killed during Vietnam war

MARBLEHEAD – Shortly before 6 p.m. on an October day in 1972, a group of men gathered on an airstrip at a U.S. Air Force base in the Phillippines. Spirits were high. They were carrying a bottle of champagne to celebrate Marblehead native Peter Cleary’s last mission.Cleary, a USAF captain, was proud to fly with a USAF Forward Air Control unit, dodging friendly and enemy fire as he kept a watchful eye on ground operations and called in air support. As the minutes dragged by and no plane appeared, Cleary’s friends grew quiet. They could feel that something was wrong.At 11 p.m. Cleary’s wife Barbara heard what she describes today as “an awful knock” on their door. Cleary’s squadron commander told her that her husband was missing in action.The Vietnam War ended three months later. Communications with North Vietnam began to improve slowly but Cleary’s name, like so many others, never turned up on a Prisoner of War list. In 1979, when he had been missing for seven years, the Air Force declared him killed in action.Barbara Cleary lived in Marblehead during the 1970s and raised her children Sean and Paige there, close to their paternal grandparents. A year after he went missing the seaside community that honors the memory of all its war dead planted a Freedom Tree in Ft. Sewall in Cleary’s memory, and in the memory of all Vietnam Prisoners of War and Missing in Action.Even with its thick, uncharted jungles, Vietnam could not keep its secrets forever. Early in 2002 a Vietnamese farmer stumbled on the wreckage of a plane and removed a weather-darkened St. Michael’s Medal from the remains of the pilot. He gave the medal to a forensic team and showed them the site.Peter Cleary, who flaunted Air Force regulations on his last FAC mission by wearing a medal with the image of the patron saint of warriors, was ready to return home at last.In April 2002, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.About that time the Norwegian Maple planted in his honor at Ft. Sewall, a tree selected for its ability to survive in the harborside salt air, inexplicably sickened and died.Saturday morning Marblehead veterans dedicated a new tree and a new plaque updating Cleary’s story. His 8-year-old grandson Peter led the Pledge of Allegiance as his sisters Ashlee and Kendall looked on. Their mother Paige was with them as was Barbara, now remarried, and a number of other relatives and friends. In a special place in her purse Barbara keeps her mother’s St. Christopher Medal, Peter Cleary’s St. Michael Medal and the wedding ring Peter gave her.Speakers at the ceremony included Veterans Agent David Rodgers, Selectmen Chairman Harry Christensen, a Vietnam veteran who was wounded in action and Tim Sullivan, a Vietnam veteran who spent five years in the North Vietnam POW camp called the Hanoi Hilton.Family members took numerous photos of the grandchildren but they were obviously saddened as they recalled Cleary’s death, 15 minutes before his final mission would have ended. They struggled to find hope and comfort in his story as well.”People talk about closure, but that isn’t what this is,” Paige said. “It’s like opening an old wound so it can heal properly.” That and other things said, she and Barbara went back to hugging the grandchildren.