Almost 100 people came to Arlington National Cemetery on Oct. 7, 2024, to bid a final farewell to Marine Corps Capt. Ronald W. Forrester. His aircraft, an A-6A Intruder, disappeared during a nighttime combat mission over North Vietnam on Dec. 27, 1972.
After Forrester’s aircraft vanished, search and rescue teams could not locate any trace of the aircraft, which Forrester flew with his copilot. In 1978, the Marine Corps changed his initial missing in action status to killed in action, and his family placed a memorial headstone at ANC.
After decades of research, investigators with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency discovered and identified the remains of Forrester and his copilot. In December 2023, Forrester’s daughter, Karoni Forrester, received a call from the Marine Corps Casualty Section to inform her that they had identified her father. “It was a grateful shock,” she said.
At the service, attendees wore uniforms, suits or leather vests covered in Vietnam War-related patches. They all looked skyward as two Boeing V-22 Osprey aircraft conducted a flyover.
U.S. Navy Chaplain (Lt. Cmdr.) Doyl McMurry oversaw the service. “The lives that Capt. Forrester touched cannot be numbered, and the lives that his family has touched cannot be counted,” he told the attendees. “We stand here with you in the hope that all will come home, and we celebrate a brother who has returned.”
At the conclusion of the service, Karoni Forrester led her family in laying yellow roses on the casket. She spoke glowingly of the father she had only known as a child. “He wanted to fly, and he wanted to serve,” she recalled. “He was in the Slide Rule Club, and he was geeky with math. He was an engineer, and he was just determined to follow his dreams.” When deciding where to bury her father, she knew that “he would have wanted Arlington.”
