The Virginian-Pilot ran a moving, powerful front page story on
Monday about a son making a motorcycle ride to visit the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial in honor of his father's service in the war. A reporter followed the
man on his trek, but things fell apart when they both came home. The man's
father says he never served in Vietnam. In fact, hardly anything about the son's
tale appears to be true.
The Pilot ran a lengthy article
highlighting the "discrepancies." It's a fascinating read and a tough
lesson for the paper. Why they didn't think to contact the man's father prior to
the trip or, at the very least, before they ran the article is beyond
comprehension.
Here are some excerpts:
Carl Stanley of Suffolk rode a motorcycle to Washington, D.C., on Saturday,
joining a pilgrimage that each Memorial Day weekend sees thousands of bikers
converge on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Stanley said he was making the trip to honor his father, whom he described as
a Vietnam War veteran who couldn't get to the Wall himself.
The motive part may be true. Much of the rest of the story, which ran on the
front page of Mondays Virginian-Pilot, may not be.
Carl Stanleys father, Carlos Martin Stanley , said he did not serve in Vietnam.
He said he was not an Air Force pilot during the conflict, and did not crash in
enemy country, as his son told Pilot reporter Stephanie Heinatz . He was not
captured by the North Vietnamese, nor did he escape from a North Vietnamese
prison camp, the elder Stanley said.
Moreover, the names of his wartime friends aren't carved into the memorial. A
rubbing made from the wall preserved the name of a stranger.
Exactly what the senior Stanley did in uniform was still murky Wednesday, but in
several interviews with Heinatz, Carl Stanley credited his account of his
fathers service to the man himself. He said he had grown up hearing of the elder
Stanleys wartime exploits in Korea and Vietnam.
Continue
reading "One heck of a (false) ride"
=========================================
A note to readers: Father, son differ on POW story
By
EARL SWIFT, The Virginian-Pilot
© June 2, 2005
A story published on Mondays front page about a motorcycle trip to Washington
to honor prisoners of war and veterans missing in action contained erroneous
information. Here is an account of the discrepancies.
Carl Stanley of Suffolk rode a motorcycle to Washington, D.C., on
Saturday, joining a pilgrimage that each Memorial Day weekend sees thousands of
bikers converge on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Stanley said he was making the trip to honor his father, whom he described as a
Vietnam War veteran who couldnt get to the Wallhimself.
The motive part may be true. Much of the rest of the story, which ran on the
front page of Mondays Virginian-Pilot, may not be.
Carl Stanleys father, Carlos Martin Stanley , said he did
not serve in Vietnam. He said he was not an Air Force pilot during the conflict,
and did not crash in enemy country, as his son told Pilot reporter Stephanie
Heinatz . He was not captured by the North Vietnamese, nor did he escape from a
North Vietnamese prison camp, the elder Stanley said.
Moreover, the names of his wartime friends arent carved into the memorial. A
rubbing made from the wall preserved the name of a stranger.
Exactly what the senior Stanley did in uniform was still murky Wednesday, but in
several interviews with Heinatz, Carl Stanley credited his account of his
fathers service to the man himself. He said he had grown up hearing of the elder
Stanleys wartime exploits in Korea and Vietnam.
Carlos Stanley told the newspaper Tuesday that he did not say what his son has
attributed to him.
I never said I was in Vietnam, he said.
This much is known: Heinatz, who covers public safety in Suffolk for the
newspaper, decided to cover the annual Rolling Thunder ride to Washington after
writing in early Ma y about a motorcycle ride honoring Iraqi war casualty Jayton
Patterson of Sedley . By way of preparation, she attended a cookout with members
of a Suffolk motorcycle club and, over chili dogs, met Carl Stanley, a shipyard
worker who lives in Chuckatuck.
I heard him tell others he was making the ride for his dad, Heinatz said
Wednesday. By the rides Saturday start, Heinatz had narrowed her focus for the
story to Stanley and one other club member. Stanley became the focus when he
told Heinatz his fathers story that of an Air Force pilot who had survived a
crash and had subsequently escaped from a POW camp and when he located a name
that he said matched that of a crewman on his fathers plane.
I stayed with him because I thought he was going to be compelling to watch,
Heinatz said. He was that: The younger Stanley was overcome with emotion, and
relied on help from another rider to take a rubbing of the purported crewmans
name.
Filing her story on deadline from a motel in Maryland, Heinatz did not
independently confirm the war story. The younger Stanleys sincerity convinced
her, she said, that he was being truthful.
But the name on the Wall Joseph Morgan Jr. does not belong to a crewman aboard a
downed Air Force airplane: Joseph Morgan Jr. was a 21-year-old Army specialist
from Florida, who died in a non-combat incident eight months after arriving in
Vietnam, according to the official Web site for the memorial.
And escapes from imprisonment during the war in Southeast Asia were so rare that
had he accomplished such a feat, Carlos Stanleys name likely would be well-known
to students of the conflict.
As it is, it isn't.
Reached Tuesday at his home in Ohio, Carlos Stanley said that his son must have
been confused: He served in Korea, he told Heinatz, not Vietnam. And he was a
prisoner of the Chinese, not the North Vietnamese, after his Douglas
B-40aircraft went down in late 1950 or early 1951.
The B-40 saw no service in Korea, said Ted Barker, who helps manage the Korean
War Project, a nonprofit clearinghouse for information about the Korean
conflict.
Barker said Wednesday that Stanley is not on any list he
has seen of POWs there.
The elder Stanley told Heinatz that he
spent three months in a Manchurian prison camp, eating fish and rice with grass
still in it,before breaking out and reuniting with American forces.
During the escape, he said, a fellow prisoner named Joe Morgan was shot, and
later died. Stanley said he carried Morgan to friendly troops, despite an injury
to his own leg.
Reach Earl Swift at (757) 446-2352 or at earl.swift@pilotonline.com.
==============
Network Note: two in-office and one online file of Korean War returnees fails to find Stanley noted.