Sister of Air Force officer missing in Vietnam War presented Gold Star banner

Published 7:30 pm Thursday, May 4, 2023

Vietnam veterans Jack Dugger and Sid Turner were at a fish fry sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Hiawassee when they began comparing notes. Dugger was wearing a POW/MIA (prisoner of war/missing in action) vest and mentioned he was a high school classmate of Bobby Marvin Jones, who was a passenger in an Air Force jet when it crashed into a mountain in Vietnam during the war.

The body of Jones, 27, who was posthumously promoted to the rank of major, has never been found. Initially he was reported as missing, but ultimately was declared dead on the same day the flight disappeared on Nov. 28, 1972, military records state. His sister, Jo Anne Shirley, formerly of Dalton, has made it her life mission to find her brother.

Last week, Blairsville residents Dugger and Turner traveled to the mountain home of Jo Anne and Dr. Rudy Shirley, who now live in Bryson City, North Carolina. Since the two vets initially met through their membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, they used the chapter’s platform to present Jo Anne Shirley with a Gold Star banner and certificate recognizing her as the family member of a veteran killed in a combat theater. They allowed a former staff writer with the Dalton Daily Citizen to ride along.

“I am absolutely blessed — and I’m shocked — because nobody hardly ever does this. It’s unbelievable,” Jo Anne Shirley said of the bestowal, and of meeting one of Bobby’s Lanier High School classmates (Dugger) from their younger days in Macon. “He was an amazing brother, and I was blessed to have him all those years.”

The story of Bobby Jones has been written about extensively in the Dalton Daily Citizen. When he flew out of Udorn Air Force Base in Thailand he was carrying a “blood chit” as all airmen did during the war. The chit, made of silk with a number assigned to the person who carried it inside his uniform, had written in several Southeast Asian languages how to contact American authorities if the pilot or passenger was seriously wounded or killed.

Dugger and Turner also went on an Honor Flight together to Washington, D.C., where they traced Bobby Jones’ name at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Dugger said Turner suggested they personalize the POW/MIA vest, adding information about Jones and even his photo.

“Without Sid, I probably wouldn’t have done this,” Dugger related. “Bobby is the only one I know personally who is still missing.”

“It is the best POW/MIA vest in the whole world,” added Turner.

Dugger and Jones were in Junior ROTC together at Lanier High, an all-boys school.

“We were the same age and graduated together,” Dugger recalled. “In ROTC, your rank is based on your grades, and he was real smart. He was a lieutenant colonel because he had the second-best grade point average (GPA) in our whole high school class, and he always bumped up the average because of his high grades. He was one of the few guys that was my size — short, so we kinda bonded.”

Eventually, Bobby Jones followed in the footsteps of his father and became a medical doctor. He is the only U.S. flight surgeon still missing in action from the Vietnam War, according to CNN.

Dugger said he was drafted in 1966 after he couldn’t pass calculus at Georgia Tech, and trained to become an artillery surveyor when the Americal Division from World War II was reformed. His work was to receive fire missions, decode them, plot the strikes on a chart and then calculate the firing data. Where he was stationed in Chu Lai was not far from Bach Ma Mountain where the F-4D Phantom Jones was flying in went down.

“I’m curious to how far I was — four years earlier — from where the plane hit the mountain,” he said.

How he found out about Jones

At age 77, Dugger still travels to alumni luncheons in Macon from his home in Union County. During one of the get-togethers he learned of Jones’ fateful flight when the jet crashed — or was shot down — on what is thought to have been a medical mission to pick up supplies.

“They didn’t know much except the fact that he was one of those still missing,” said Dugger of his classmates. “In Macon, my daddy was a watchmaker and he fixed everybody’s watches. He knew Bobby’s daddy and fixed his watches. That was another connection I had with Bobby. I didn’t know his sister (Jo Anne). But I had an attraction to wanting to know more and more about Bobby and what happened. I got the tracing at ‘The Wall’ (Vietnam Veterans Memorial), and later I got that vest. Sid came up with the idea to make it personal. It just kinda came together.”

Turner served as a military policeman in Vietnam.

“I knew it could be done, because I’ve done stuff like that for my Army unit,” he said of the commemorative vest. “When we went to eat at the VFW, Jack said of the vest, ‘This is for Bobby Jones,’ and I said, ‘Well, let’s make it obvious.’”

Turner also explained the Gold Star banner.

“The Blue Star banner was designed in 1917 by Capt. Robert L. Queisser of the Fifth Ohio Infantry to honor his two sons serving on the front lines in World War I,” he said. “It was quickly adopted in Ohio, and soon it became the national symbol to show that a family member was serving in the Armed Forces. The Gold Star banner evolved from that to show that a family member had made the ultimate sacrifice in service to his country.”

The only vestige of Bobby Jones ever found is his blood chit, located when a search team went in years later to look for him. Dugger and Turner both believe nearby villagers possessed the blood chit for years, and when they heard an American search team was coming in, placed the chit in the forks of two trees near the ground where it could be easily found.

On the day of the 36th anniversary of the crash, the family received the blood chit from the Air Force. Jo Anne Shirley immediately realized the fragility of the aged and folded fabric document, and did not attempt to refold it. It is now framed behind glass and displayed in her home. Turner and Dugger had Shirley wear the vest during their visit, and now they’re working on personalizing another one just for her — with a photo of her brother who is still missing more than half a century later.

Jones was deployed with the 7th Air Force, 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing of the 432nd U.S. Air Force Hospital unit.