@9/1/97 The following is an excerpt from a communicae which I Received from John T. McDonnell jr. without whose sacrifice this would not have been possible.

Gerry, Just wanted to follow up Gunny's reply to re: my dad- Folks like Gunny and Lynn O'Shea have really busted their butts for this cause and I am forever grateful for their efforts. A little background on my dad that you may find useful and may be of general interest... He went to Laneri High School in Ft. Worth. It may have been called St. Laneri as it was a Catholic school that, to my understanding, no longer exists. He was a halfback on the football team and ran the 440 in track (unfortunately I didn't inherit any of his speed). He supposedly fought against his brother (Bob) for the gold gloves championship at the Tarrant County Convention Center. This probably occurred in the early 60's...if you ever come across a newspaper article please let me know. Anyway, my uncle Bob told my dad that the first time his kid brother was going to best him was going to be in front of 20000 folks, and sure enough he did. My uncle is a character, but that's another story. My dad's father, Emmitt, played soccer for the St. Louis Tornados (thus my dad's birth in MO). Emmitt is in the US Soccer Hall of Fame. He enlisted in the army and did a tour in Germany at the Nike Missile base near Heilbronn (where I was born). I think he was stationed in Denton as we lived there for many years, even after he went back for two tours as an ARVN advisor with the Army's special forces. They had him pushing papers some in Washington state when he told his supervisor that he wanted to go to chopper school or he was going to leave the army and work for an intelligence agency. He was part of the first wave of pilots that were qualified to fly the Cobra attack helicopters. He was infused to an air cavalry unit that had trained together at Ft. Sill a few months earlier. That was his third tour. The concensus of his colleagues was that he helped to save the life of his copilot by hiding from enemy forces. When it got too difficult, these folks think that my dad created a disturbance to lead the enemy away from the area where he may have left Ron. Of course all of this is conjecture. If you do a search at the library of congress on McDonnell, and you will find about 60 hits re: my dad. Some of them pertain to live sitings that are in his file. Lynn O'Shea has been doing alot of work to flesh out the details and I expect that Lynn will be bringing her findings to the attention of many as they are quite interesting. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions... I'd be happy to provide any information of interest and would love to see your web page when you get it up and running. Many thanks for your concern and godspeed. JM

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