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4 MISSING IN ACTION MOST EAST COAST TELEVISION VIEWERS HAD GONE TO BED by the time Lyndon Johnson announced the air raids. But he held a large captive audience in California and other states where the night was still young. Lalo and Chole Alvarez, at home in Santa Clara, believed their son was due for shore leave in Hong Kong. There was no reason they should feel particularly concerned. The conflict in Vietnam was rarely on the front pages and few but the military and academics kept abreast of those distant events. To Lalo and Chole there wasn't even a Vietnam. They knew that vague geographical mass by its more familiar name of Indochina. Chole, however, had always feared the obvious dangers facing pilots like her son. Though lost in the technical jargon of aviators, she knew that an airborne pilot did not have to be all that close to hostilities to wind up in the center of the conflict. Her son, she realized, flew a plane that could cover 500 miles in less than an hour. "Oh, my son!" she frequently moaned in the presence of Lalo, her husband . Deep down, Lalo worried too. A hard-nosed sheet-metal welder and pattern -maker in a missile plant, he put on a steely mask and in his slow, gravely bass voice offered words of masculine assurance. "Nothing's going to happen. Nothing at all. And if it does, we'll know about it real fast. Anytime you see a black limo parked in front of the house, you'll know we've got real problems ." The president's televised speech did not fill them with any special anxiety. He had not mentioned that their son's carrier was steaming westwards to launch air attacks against North Vietnam. Yet hours later, when Chole was already asleep and a drowsy Lalo prepared to turn out the lights, he caught some mention on the radio of U.S. pilots being shot down. It wasdisturbing 42 MISSING IN ACTION 43 news, but it didn't knock him off balance. There were thousands of U.S. pilots and besides, Everett should be out of range of the conflict. Nevertheless, his own son being a pilot, he instantaneously felt sympathy for the young men's parents. They were all part of a very large family, and, though unknown to each other, the mothers and fathers felt bonded by common perils. The next morning, Chole busied herself in the kitchen preparingbreakfast with her youngest daughter, Madeleine, twelve. Out of earshot in the living room, Delia, twenty-three, noticed her father do something uncharacteristic. He switched on the television. The two of them stood transfixed as the announcer reported that warplanes from the aircraft carriers Constellation and Ticonderoga had bombed North Vietnam. Two pilots were lost, one in each of the two downed aircraft, according to Defense Secretary McNamara. Without comment, Lalo turned off the set. Father and daughter avoided each other's eyes and neither uttered a word. Both were careful not to mention anything about the newscast to Chole or Madeleine. By the time Delia, a social worker, arrived at her office, she had read an account in the newspaper about two pilots not returning from their combat missions. There were no names and neither of the aircraft was identified. With a faint attempt at laughingoff her nagging sense of unease, she quipped to colleagues, "It would be just my luck, with so many pilots out there, to have my brother get shot down!" She felt queasy thinking about his fate because they had been close since childhood. The tiny home on Pearl Street in Salinas where they grew up was no more than thirty feet long by twenty-five feet wide: they had shared a bunk bed tucked alongside one of the thin walls, with Everett sleeping up top because only he was big enough to make the climb. There were no girls in the sparsely populated neighborhood so Delia, a tomboy, had hung around with Everett. They had fought like most young siblings but he had been very protective of her, once chasing off some kids who'd struck her with a stone during a standoff. When they were indoors they listened together for hours to mystery programs and the Lone Ranger on the crackling family radio, or they played Chinese Checkers—the only board game they owned. Though the newspaper arrived every day, books were a rarity and for years the sole...

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