Professional Soldiers ® - View Single Post - Seeking Info SSG Raymond F. Parks on 14 July 1962

InfantryPL · 02-27-2007, 11:57

I apologize for breaking a rule and posting on my 2nd day as a member, but this seemed a worthy cause.

While I was an enlisted man in the 25th ID(L) in Hawaii 1992-94, I had a POW bracelet with Raymond Parks' name. As luck would have it, my unit did a "field trip" of sorts to Central Identification Labratory Hawaii (CILHI) and while there I asked someone if he could break the rules and look up the guy's file. I felt a bond to him that...well you SF guys should get it...anyway, long story short, the file said that he was promoted posthumously to SFC. The helo he was on had gone down and he was declared killed, body not recovered.

His family's last known whereabouts were in North Carolina if you want to try digging there, but I believe he was originally from the midwest, Ohio or Michigan, I don't recall which. Perhaps they would have contact with the individual you mentioned. I looked up his family at the time (this was summer 1994) and I was going to call them thinking they'd like to know someone was wearing their soldier's bracelet. In the end I decided to let them have closure, and I never did call. Still, I think I have their contact info somewhere in a box with my old crap from my regular army days, so if I find it, I'll pass it on via PM.
2LT Soika

02-27-2007, 11:57	#7
InfantryPL Asset Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Wisconsin Posts: 8	SSG Raymond F. Parks I apologize for breaking a rule and posting on my 2nd day as a member, but this seemed a worthy cause. While I was an enlisted man in the 25th ID(L) in Hawaii 1992-94, I had a POW bracelet with Raymond Parks' name. As luck would have it, my unit did a "field trip" of sorts to Central Identification Labratory Hawaii (CILHI) and while there I asked someone if he could break the rules and look up the guy's file. I felt a bond to him that...well you SF guys should get it...anyway, long story short, the file said that he was promoted posthumously to SFC. The helo he was on had gone down and he was declared killed, body not recovered. His family's last known whereabouts were in North Carolina if you want to try digging there, but I believe he was originally from the midwest, Ohio or Michigan, I don't recall which. Perhaps they would have contact with the individual you mentioned. I looked up his family at the time (this was summer 1994) and I was going to call them thinking they'd like to know someone was wearing their soldier's bracelet. In the end I decided to let them have closure, and I never did call. Still, I think I have their contact info somewhere in a box with my old crap from my regular army days, so if I find it, I'll pass it on via PM. 2LT Soika __________________ War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill
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