On a cold, rainy day on March 9, 2024, twenty people gathered to remember the tenth anniversary of the burial of U.S. Army Spc5 Wyley Wright Jr. and his wife, Ouida Fay Wright, at Arlington National Cemetery.
Their burial together in Section 59 on March 9, 2014, brought together two people who had been separated in death for more than 50 years. Spc5 Wright, a crew chief with the 114th Aviation Company, lost his life on March 9, 1964, when the UH-1 Huey helicopter he was in crashed in a swamp along the Mekong Delta near the South Vietnamese town of Vinh Long. His remains were brought back to the United States and buried in a segregated cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida. Ouida died the same day as her husband in 1970 and was also buried in a segregated cemetery in Columbus, Georgia.
Fifty years after Spc5 Wright’s death, his oldest daughter, Jackie Wright, decided her parents should be reunited and buried together at Arlington National Cemetery. She knew it would be difficult, but a verse from the book of Genesis (50:25) inspired her: “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.” “It gave me peace,” said Wright after the ceremony, “and I said ‘okay, we're going to do this.’”
Due to heavy rain, the tenth anniversary ceremony took place under a court shelter at the Columbarium Courts. The family brought a wreath adorned with white and red roses and a sash that read: “Spc5 Wyley & Ouida Wright—Love Reunited.” The ceremony commenced with a prayer by one of the Wright’s sons, Stanley Wright, followed by Sylvia Camile Pierce singing “Blessed Assurance.”
Jackie Wright then addressed family and friends who came to honor her parents. She spoke about her 2015 trip to Vietnam during Father's Day Week with her youngest sister, Phyllis Cameron, to visit her father’s air base, places he visited, and his crash site. She then asked everyone to lift the spirits of those killed in her father’s helicopter crash. “Our father, Wyley Wright, and Pfc. John Francis Shea,” she called out. “We honor the sacrifice they gave.”
She then asked to lift the spirits of other people related to her father: Lt. Kenneth A. Shannon, a helicopter pilot who died within days of Spc5 Wright, when his helicopter was shot down, Maj. George Young, the commander of the 114th Aviation Company, and everyone in the 114th. She ended by acknowledging the Vietnamese people who lost their lives during the war.
The 2024 ceremony was also titled "Love Separated in Life...Love Reunited in Honor" as it was in 2014. This year it was in tribute to U.S. Army Veteran Joe N. Wright and his wife Brenda Tibbs Wright, who both died since the March 10, 2014 reburial of their parents. Wright concluded the ceremony by quoting Joe, Wright concluded the ceremony by telling everyone that if someone wrongs them to write it in sand “because over time the winds of time will make it go away, but if someone is good to them, write it in stone so they will always remember it. It is for us to have a spirit of forgiveness,” she said, “and it is for us to remember the good.”