Published: May 10, 2008 10:09 pm      

Oliver North to tell tale of Edmond hero

EDMOND — Today marks another Mother’s Day, a day Edmond resident Laverne Ransbottom will never forget.

Forty years ago, on Mother’s Day May 12, 1968, Laverne learned her son’s outpost was overrun by the North Vietnamese Army and wiped out, with the exception of two men.

Her son, Fredrick Joel Ransbottom, would earn a Silver Star citation for his valor, and 38 years later she would welcome home his remains.

The identification methods used to identify Ransbottom’s remains, his journey home and his ultimate resting place will be the topic of former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, who is now a correspondent for Fox News Channel on defense/war issues.

North visited Laverne Ransbottom and her family in Edmond three weeks ago with plans to broadcast her son’s story of recovery, identification and ultimate return home for burial.

North hosts “War Stories,” a military history program broadcast at 8 p.m. Saturdays. The program covers stories relating to war and national defense.

A platoon leader himself in the Vietnam War, North served in the military for 22 years following his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968.

Ransbottom was the leader of a reconnaissance platoon known as “Snoopy 6” with E Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry, 196th Infantry Brigade, 23rd Division, Americal. His platoon was defending a Special Forces airstrip at Kham Duc. The camp was strategically located near the Ho Chi Minh trail just 10 miles east of Laos.

On Mother’s Day 1968, the airstrip came under the third day of heavy attack, and it was on this day that Ransbottom was listed as missing.

“I can sit here and still remember that day,” Laverne Ransbottom said. “I remember thinking that he has to be alive; he can’t be dead, he is so young and so good.”

For 38 years she knocked on doors, spoke to anyone who would listen and kept her son’s name alive in hopes that one day his remains would be found and returned. Laverne had made more than 35 trips to Washington, D.C., during the past 38 years as well as trips to Honolulu.

That day finally came. Maj. Ransbottom’s remains had been found, identified and brought back to Edmond to be laid to rest. On a cold, icy January afternoon in 2007, Freddy Joe’s remains were buried at Memorial Park Cemetery next to his father, Fredrick Ransbottom.



Technology brings closure to families

As an Edmond mother finally put her soldier son to rest, the modern technology used to find his remains is helping others find closure, and this is the story to be told by North in one of his “War Stories” series.

“Ransbottom is one of the success stories we like to see,” said Jim Canik, deputy director of the Defense Department’s DNA registry.

“We’re using a technology that wasn’t available 20 or 30 years ago to help in the process and now we are being able to leverage this new technology to try to provide the information to the families.”

Investigators use medical X-rays, anthropological information and, in Ransbottom’s case, dental records and personal effects, to help make identifications.

Canik said every human carries around a sort of cellular dog tag, nuclear DNA, the genetic material inherited from a person’s mother and father, to identify many of the remains coming home from Vietnam.

In the fall of 1990, the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory was first conceived, with the task of developing a DNA specimen collection-storage-retrieval system and a laboratory for the typing of DNA specimens of military personnel.

AFDIL has stored DNA samples to identify casualties in Afghanistan as well as the uniformed victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon.

Canik said the ability to identify soldiers’ remains from the Vietnam War is bringing healing to untold numbers of Americans who lost loved ones.

“Whether you are dealing directly with a mother or father, brother or sister, it’s one of those unhealed wounds that never goes away,” he said. “It’s amazing the reactions that you see because of the fact that often those families are so grateful to finally get an answer.”

While in Edmond, North interviewed Bill Wright, now living in Moore and one of the two soldiers who escaped that Mother’s Day 40 years ago. North read articles and looked at photos printed in The Edmond Sun, visited with the family to learn more about Maj. Ransbottom and visited his grave.

He also shared stories with Laverne’s nephew, Robert Anderson, who had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.

North told Laverne and her family that he wants the men and women fighting for the United States in wars throughout the world to know that no man will be left behind.

Maj. Ransbottom’s story is one that deserves to be told, and this coming July, North plans to do just that.