{"id":128644,"date":"2022-08-03T06:00:30","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T10:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=128644"},"modified":"2022-08-02T18:56:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T22:56:16","slug":"need-help-to-find-family-of-quincy-ma-vietnam-pow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=128644","title":{"rendered":"Need help to find family of Quincy, MA Vietnam POW"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Command Chief Master Sergeant Peters wants to find the family of a Vietnam POW name of Robert Phillips from Quincy, MA.<\/p>\n

The plaque pictured above was found at the site of since-closed Lockport Air Force Station in New\u00a0 York<\/p>\n

John Magnarelli, an Army veteran, brought the story of his high school friend and classmate “Bobby” to the attention of the Quincy mayor earlier this year. Last month, Phillips became the 50th name engraved on the city’s Vietnam memorial clock tower in Marina Bay.<\/p>\n

As best as he can tell,\u00a0Magnarelli said Phillips and two others were captured while delivering supplies to a base in Vietnam. He was moved around from one prisoner camp to another for months, his friend said, and attempted escape early in his captivity. More than a year and a half later, he\u00a0did manage to escape before being recaptured and\u00a0 possibly\u00a0killed shortly after. The nonprofit POW Network <\/a>reports Phillips may have been in Cambodia at the time of his death.<\/p>\n

“His body was never recovered. And to this day, there is still no closure for his family and friends,”\u00a0Magnarelli said through tears.<\/p>\n

Phillips was awarded the Prisoner of War Medal.<\/p>\n

On a web page run by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, dozens of people have commented on stories about Phillips and expressed gratitude for his service. One woman, who posted under the name Lisa Caruso, wrote in 2007, about the very same plaque Peters and his men found.<\/p>\n

Her post reads:<\/p>\n

“It was around 1973 when my mother handed me a copper bracelet reading, Pfc Robert P. Phillips. That same year, we planted a ‘Freedom Tree” in his honor. The tree is at Lockport Air Station in New York state.<\/p>\n

About five years later, I revisited the tree, the copper bracelet [sic] still wrapped around my wrist.<\/p>\n

I’ve traded the copper for silver and he’s been promoted to Sgt., but Robert “Bob” Paul Phillips remains in my heart and his bracelet rests beneath his photo given to me by his mother the day we planted the tree.”<\/p>\n

That’s all she wrote, her words accompanied by a photo of a young woman and girl standing near a newly planted tree, with an unidentifiable plaque in front.<\/p>\n

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“It was around 1973 when my mother handed me a copper bracelet\u00a0reading, Pfc Robert P. Phillips. That same year, we planted a ‘Freedom Tree” in his honor. The tree is at Lockport Air Station in New York state.<\/p>\n

About five years later, I revisited the tree, the copper bracelet\u00a0[sic] still wrapped around my wrist.<\/p>\n

I’ve traded the copper for silver and he’s been promoted to Sgt., but Robert “Bob” Paul Phillips remains in my heart and his bracelet rests beneath his photo given to me by his mother the day we planted the tree.”<\/p>\n

That’s all she wrote, her words accompanied by a photo of a young woman and girl standing near a \u00a0newly planted tree, with an unidentifiable plaque in front.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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A photo posted to vvmf.org by “Lisa Caruso” in 2007 showing a tree and plaque dedicated to Staff Sgt. Robert Phillips, a North Quincy native who served in Vietnam and was taken prisoner by enemy forces in the early 1970s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is no indication of if Caruso knew Phillips personally, why she planted a tree in his honor, if she is still in contact with the family or any other details. Peters said he’s tried repeatedly to find\u00a0her,\u00a0 but to no avail.<\/p>\n

He and others even drove to the former Lockport station to look for clues, but couldn’t find the tree shown as a sapling in the photo posted by Caruso. Last week, Peters visited Washington D.C., where he searched the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall for Phillips’ name.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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“We were devastated to just find this on our base with weeds around it,” Peters\u00a0said. “We\u00a0have this plaque and we would love to be able to find Lisa to see what she knows, and we’d love to be able to find family. .. As a command chief, I can’t just let people disappear. We’re going to make sure this is properly taken care of.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mary Whitfill<\/a>\u00a0of the Patriot-Ledger wrote the original story.<\/p>\n

This seems like a job for TAH. There’s at least three righteous people trying to honor one of our own, and I’m hoping someone may know or can find something of that Phillips family from\u00a0 Quincy, MA or the whereabouts of Ms. Lisa Caruso.\u00a0 Ms. Whitfill’s email is in the article.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Command Chief Master Sergeant Peters wants to find the family of a Vietnam POW name of … Need help to find family of Quincy, MA Vietnam POW<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,642,336],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army","category-fair-winds-and-following-seas","category-pow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128646,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128644\/revisions\/128646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}