Exhibition awards Fargo Pilot who were killed during the Vietnam War – Inforum

Fargo – Michael Keller was 4 years old in 1969, the year when his father Wendell Keller, a native Fargo and a US Air Force Fighter Pilot, was shot down on a night mission on Laos during the Vietnam War.

Keller said he understood that his father was killed during the war, but the official confirmation only came in 2010 when a search team traveled to Laos to take a closer look that was identified as a crash many years earlier.

Searchers found a destroyed ID card that belonged to Maj. Wendell Keller, and the rehearsals of human remains were ultimately confirmed as that of Keller and Virgil “Mike” Meroney, Keller's co-pilot in the F-4D-Phantom jet.

In 2012, the remains of the two men on the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, were rested.

Michael Keller told the forum in 2012 that he always had the feeling that his father was a hero, but strengthened the feelings after his father's plane crash was discovered.

These feelings were resumed about two months ago when Keller, who lives in West Fargo, observed a documentary about the Vietnam War and noticed the film material of an airplane that looked similar to his father's F-4D phantom.

Alyssa Goelzer / The Forum

He ran amazed to find a model aircraft that he had made out of his father's aircraft to check the aircraft's identification number.

Sure enough, the aircraft in the film material was his father's aircraft.

Keller said his wife Janie told him that it might be a sign that maybe the right time was to collect all memorials and facts that he knew about his father's military service, and the Fargo Air Museum on the occasion that the museum might be interested in creating an exhibition.

The museum was. And it did.

Keller worked with Max Sabin, Collections Curator in the museum, to create a permanent display with artifacts, documents and pictures of Wendell Keller's military career.

The exhibition was unveiled during a recent event in the museum, where the basement told the history of his father's life, including a report on the last mission of his father, which was reconstructed from military records.

According to the account, Wendell Keller's fighter plane has teamed up with another F-4D-Phantom jet for a night attack on a suspected ammunition waste that was hidden in the Laotian jungle.

The goal was in an area as Ho Chi Minh Trail, a military supply route that led from Nordvietnam through Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam.

Keller, who was in his 80th mission, had just made his last passport for the goal and launched the aircraft missiles when witnesses watched in the accompanying plane, how to get out of the ground and struggle towards Keller's aircraft.

Moments later a large explosion broke out on the floor, and the attempts of the accompanying aircraft to reach Keller aircraft by radio were hit with silence.

In recognition of his military service, Michael Keller said that his father had been awarded the respected flying cross, the air medal with four oak blusters and the purple heart.

Alyssa Goelzer / The Forum

Wendell Keller also received a posthumous advertising in the rank.

During his presentation in the museum, Michael Keller spoke about a woman who turned to him after his father's remains had been identified.

The woman told him that she had learned about the fact that his father was missing in action 40 years earlier, and she attracted a memorial strap in his memory.

She said that over the years she has opposed to remove the bracelet, even when she had to do a doctor who should carry out a procedure for her.

The woman who lives in Texas today and continues to act Christmas cards with Michael Keller's family offered Keller the bracelet and accepted the gift.

The band is one of the objects in the new museum exhibition.