A recent editing project of mine is a textbook for pre-law students, "American Constitutionalism," and it highlights famous legal cases and documents in our nation's history. One chapter was entitled "The Watergate Era" and it brought back long-forgotten names like Martha Mitchell, John Dean, John Sirica and Archibald Cox. I remember watching the Watergate hearings on video monitors set up throughout my high school, and our less hide-bound social studies teachers threw out their planned curricula in favor of the living history we were witnessing.
There was another poignant reminder of those times in the obituary column last week: the remains of Air Force Major Louis Fulda Guillermin of West Chester were finally identified, 45 years after his A-26 Invader plane crashed in Laos. The accompanying photo shows the handsome navigator smiling and wearing in a white dress uniform with a black bowtie. He was declared dead in 1978 after being missing in action for 10 years. I can't imagine what his family went through.
Major Guillermin was with the 609th Air Commando Squadron, 56th Air Commando Wing, 7th AF, United States Air Force. As a terse description that I found online reads: "Maj. (then 1st Lt) Luis Guillermin and Lt. Colonel (then Capt.) Robert Pietsch were flying an A26A aircraft over Laos when the plane was downed in Savannakhet Province, Laos. Their last known location was about 10 miles east of the city of Ban Muong Sen."
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