These Families Have Been Waiting for 50 Years

By Jessica Pearce Rotondi

Author of What We Inherit and Chair, Legacies Library

Jessica receiving a signed 2024 National POW/MIA Recognition Day poster from Director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Kelly McKeague.

I felt it the moment I walked into the ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.-- a weight in my chest I couldn’t shake. I tried to convince myself it was the summer’s heat, the muggy air bringing memories of my time in Laos rushing back. But the moment I got up to the podium, I knew it was the weight of shared history.

The Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency had invited me on behalf of Legacies of War to speak at the 2024 Vietnam War Annual Government Briefing. I shared the story of my family’s 36-year search for my uncle Jack, whose plane was shot down over Laos in March of 1972, and how frustration over censorship and the lack of resources about the American “Secret War” in Laos led me to co-found Legacies Library.

Ed Pearce in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Nearly every person in that room was still waiting for answers about a loved one. My family searched for Jack for almost four decades, but the families I was addressing were now-adult children still looking for their fathers and siblings still waiting for news. They had all been individually briefed–many of them just that morning–on the status of their missing loved one’s case. Some had been coming to these meetings for close to 50 years, each time hoping for closure.

Rosemary and Ed Pearce, Jessica'as grandparents, marching in a Memorial Day parade carrying the POW/MIA flag in honor of their missing son.

This gathering, I soon realized, was a sort of MIA family reunion. It was emotional but also a relief to be in a space where everyone immediately gets the unique pain that is having someone you love go missing in war and holding out hope that you’ll get them back. I met an MIA daughter who rides motorcycles across the country in her father’s memory, her soundtrack the music he once sang to her. A sister building the National POW/MIA Memorial & Museum in Florida while still hoping for news of her brother. I was floored by the difficult and dangerous work of forensic anthropologist Dr. Nicolette Parr, who exhumes sites around the globe to give families peace. Moved by the emotional farewell speech of Colonel Matt Brannen, USMC, Deputy Director for Operations at DPAA, and the care and attention with which Director Kelly McKeague and Sergeant Major Anthony D. Worsley addressed questions from the audience.

Many of those still missing from The Vietnam War disappeared in Laos. Being in that room underscored the importance of the work we’re doing at Legacies Library at Legacies of War to ensure the “Secret War” in Laos is no longer a footnote in American history. Our stories have the power to expose the past and change the present while keeping those we love with us, always.

I shared my family’s story when I wrote What We Inherit. Now, when I speak about Legacies of War and pillars of history, healing, and hope, I’ll be carrying forward the hope of those families I met in Washington with me.

Sera, Jessica, and Khamsone representing Legacies of War in Washington!