THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

The six bones, four ribs, a pelvis and a humerus, have lain in their honored resting place for nearly 14 years. When they were placed in Arlington National Cemetary's Tomb of the Unknowns on Memorial Day 1984 it marked a belated gesture of national closure after the Vietnam war. There the matter lay, at least officially, until last month when the Defense Department acknowledged that the bones had been found with money, shred of a pilot's flight suit, part of an ejection seat and two ID cards belonging to Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie. The 24- year old pilot was shot down in May, 1972 five months before the remains were recovered. The announcement, accompanied by the news that the Pentagon is considering digging up the bones for DNA test, has embarrassed the department, provoked a congressional outcry and transformed Micheal Blassie's mother and siblings as they gather here in an effort to bring him home. For Jean Blassie, grief is an old and strict acqaintance. "My younger son said, 'Mom you never cry,'" she recalls sitting in her apartment dining area with a picture of her firstborn. "I told him, 'I don't cry. I almost cry, but I don't cry.'" For eight years after the remains were discovered, they were officially listed as "believed to be Michael Blassie's" although the family was never told that. But for reasons that are unclear, the bones were ultamitly reclassifed as unknown.

When the news was about to break, Jean Blassie called a family meeting. Her other children, Judy Cozard, 46, Mary Hart,43, and George Blassie,36, all live in the St.Louis area. Pat, a public affairs officer in the Air Force Reserve and the family's chief press representative, packed up her laptop, printer and fax machine before heading home.

"My mother said she wanted to bring him home, and every family member agreed," Pat says. "Every member has to agree." Their decision has sent them careening through a maze of unexpected discoveries, unfamilar questions and suprisingly fresh pain. Still, each of them calls it a blessing.

"I feel that knowing it's given us a little peace," jean says "Its always been in the back of your mind where is he. Even though he was reported killed in action.... you wonder if he really was.

Lost ID

Michael Blassie's A-37 attack plane went down on May 11,1972, near An Loc, 60 miles north of Saigon. Because of an ongoing North Vietnamese offensive, is wasn't until October that the bones were found by South Vietnamese troops, together with the IDs and the other articles." But between the time those remains were found and the time they arrived at the U.S. mortuary in Saigon, those identifying remains became seperated from the skeletal remains," says Larry Greer, head of the Pentagon's Defense POW-missing personnel 0ffice.

The ID's have never been recovered. But in any case, for the Pentagon, their proximity to the six recovered bones dosen't prove anything. "If you had an auto accident and there were unidentifiable remains with a drivers license that obiously wouldn't be enough to ID the body."

From saigon the remains were shipped to the Central Identification Lab in Hawaii. It was the that in 1980 their classification was changed from "believed to be Micheal Blassie." In the early 1980's the Reagan administration was being pressured to add a set of remains from the Vietnam war to the Tomb of the Unknowns. The move was seen as an overdue gesture of reconciliation, as well as a display of support for the families of those still missing in action. Lawmakers and MIA activists have suggested that the Pentagon, unable to find an unidentified body, destroyed documents identifying Micheal Blassie's remains.

On May 28 the bones were transported by caisson to the cemetery, stopping briefly at the new vietnam memorial. There was something at once romantic and comferting about the unknown soldier. He stands for all, paying the considerable price of his own identity. His lost dream, his weeping mother, his fatherless child these are visiable to children.

In a widely quoted speech at the tomb of the unknowns, reagan asked, "As a child, did he play on some street in a great american city? Did he work beside his father on a farm in american's heartland? Did he marry? Did he have children?

Ten years after the burial, Pat Blassie read an article in the U.S. veteran's dispatch by vietnam vet Ted Samplay, who has devoted years to POW-MIA activism, which said that the reamains in the tomb were those of her brother. She contacted the Air Force but was told there was nothing to substantiate the claim.

The blassie family now hopes the government will agree to exhume the coffin for a mitochondrial DNA test, which can establish identity through genetic makers in the material line. If they get the okay, Jean Blassie will allow a few drops of her blood to be drawn. Should the test go as the family expects, she will know that the bones of the unknown soldier were really the bones of her son micheal blassie.

A frozen future George Blassie was 5 when his brother left home for the air force and 11 when he was killed in vietnam. "He says he feels cheated."

Micheal Blassie arrived in vietnam in January 1975, and when he was killed four months later he was flying his 132nd mission.