Staff Sgt. Cooke of Washington, D.C. was aboard an aircraft when it was hit by enemy fire and crashed. 'Grady' grew up in Maryland and joined the Air Force after he graduated from high school. He met Carol, a Stanwood native, while stationed at the former Paine Field Air Force Base. They married young, he was 19, Anderson 18. Their youngest child, Laurel, was only 20 months old when Cooke died. Enemy activity prevented any recovery attempts until three years later in 1975 when a Vietnamese search team recovered artifacts and remains that were later identified as belonging to another crewman. In 1988, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (S.R.V.) confiscated remains from a Vietnamese national in Ho Chi Minh City and returned them to the U.S. custody. The Vietnamese attributed the remains to Cooke. In April 1989, a Vietnamese woman living in Thailand told U.S. interviewers that she witnessed the crash of a C-130 in 1972 near An Loc City. She was a schoolteacher at the time of the incident but moved due to hostilities in the area. He was 26. Air Force, 345th TAC Airlift Squad, 374th TAW, 13th Infantry.
Staff Sgt. Cooke of Washington, D.C. was aboard an aircraft when it was hit by enemy fire and crashed. 'Grady' grew up in Maryland and joined the Air Force after he graduated from high school. He met Carol, a Stanwood native, while stationed at the former Paine Field Air Force Base. They married young, he was 19, Anderson 18. Their youngest child, Laurel, was only 20 months old when Cooke died. Enemy activity prevented any recovery attempts until three years later in 1975 when a Vietnamese search team recovered artifacts and remains that were later identified as belonging to another crewman. In 1988, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (S.R.V.) confiscated remains from a Vietnamese national in Ho Chi Minh City and returned them to the U.S. custody. The Vietnamese attributed the remains to Cooke. In April 1989, a Vietnamese woman living in Thailand told U.S. interviewers that she witnessed the crash of a C-130 in 1972 near An Loc City. She was a schoolteacher at the time of the incident but moved due to hostilities in the area. He was 26. Air Force, 345th TAC Airlift Squad, 374th TAW, 13th Infantry.
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