Crowds line motorcade for lost pilot’s casket

The widow of Captain Scott Speicher, places flowers on his coffin after it was unloaded from a charter jet at NAS Jacksonville Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009 in Jacksonville, Fla. The remains of Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher returned to his Florida home on Thursday, 18 years after his FA-18 Hornet was shot down on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War. (AP Photo/The Florida Times-Union, Bob Self)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Thousands of people lined the streets for the funeral procession of Gulf War Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, whose remains were discovered in Iraq and returned home 18 years after his plane was shot down.

A hearse carried the flag-draped casket to a monument to the area’s war dead, where military officials, Gov. Charlie Crist and the Jacksonville mayor spoke in honor of Speicher, whose FA-18 Hornet was downed on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War. Several Jacksonville Jaguars players and coach Jack Del Rio joined hundreds at the Memorial Wall monument.

The procession was scheduled to pass places important in Speicher’s life, including the church where he taught Sunday school and the high school where he excelled at swimming and tennis.

Speicher graduated from Florida State University in 1980 with a business administration degree. The school’s $1.2 million Scott Speicher Tennis Complex was dedicated in 1993.

“Michael Scott Speicher paid the ultimate prize for our freedom,” Mayor John Payton said.

For nearly two decades after the 33-year-old Speicher disappeared over the Iraq desert, his family pushed the Defense Department to find out what had happened. On Aug. 2, the Pentagon disclosed that Marines had recovered Speicher’s bones and skeletal fragments - enough for a positive identification.

Speicher, a Kansas City-area native who moved to Florida as a teenager, will be laid to rest in a private ceremony at Jacksonville Memory Gardens.

His remains were flown to the Jacksonville Naval Air Station on Thursday and the casket remained in a chapel on the base overnight.
Speicher’s widow and his children placed roses on his flag-draped casket on arrival. Sailors stood at attention and lined the runway as the hearse passed.

Buddy Harris, who was Speicher’s best friend and who later married his widow, Joanne, accompanied the casket on the flight from Dover, Del., to Florida.

Defense officials originally declared Speicher killed in action hours after his plane was shot down over west-central Iraq. Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced on television that Speicher was the first casualty of the Gulf War.

Ten years after the crash, the Navy changed Speicher’s status to missing in action, citing an absence of evidence that Speicher had died. In October 2002, the Navy switched his status to “missing/captured,” although it has never explained why.

Over the years, critics said the Navy had not done enough, particularly right after the crash, to search for the pilot.

The military recovered bones and multiple skeletal fragments recently, and Speicher was identified by matching a jawbone and dental records and later by DNA reference samples from family members.

Tags: Michael Scott Speicher, SDNN

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