Special to the Banner-News
El Dorado native Senior Master Sergeant Robert Thomas (Tommy) Elliott, who was killed in action in the Vietnam War, is returning home a second time.
Elliott was a 1967 graduate of El Dorado High School, attended Southern Arkansas University, and in 1970 graduated from Oil Belt Vocational Technical School (now South Arkansas Community College - East Campus) before his military service.
A gunner in the Air Force Special Forces, Elliott died when an AC-130A gunship was shot down on Dec. 21, 1972. The gunship was on a reconnaissance mission to prevent North Vietnamese Army units from infiltrating South Vietnam through the neighboring country of Laos.
Not until 1985 did communist authorities allow a recovery team to excavate the crash site, where hundreds of bone fragments were recovered. Using the recovered fragments, a military forensic specialist at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii officially identified each of the 13 unaccounted-for crew members from Elliott’s final mission. DNA analysis was not utilized by the military for positive identification of MIA or KIA servicemen at that time.
The physical remains identified as Elliott’s were returned to his parents, John Thomas and Almeda Crowder Elliott. A burial with full military honors was held on July 21, 1985, at Arlington Memorial Park in El Dorado.
In 2014 the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware requested DNA samples from family members for use in the identification of servicemen from undesignated bone fragments stored at Hickam.
Based on the submitted DNA, several fragments were positively identified as Elliott’s and will be interred within his grave during a memorial service on May 6 at 11 a.m. Elliott’s senior class is holding their 50th reunion that weekend. Some of his classmates requested that the service be held at that time so they might attend.
Elliott’s surviving family members are sisters Nancy Lewis of Magnolia and Peggy Byrd of Silsbee, Texas, and nephew Mark Elliott Lewis of Conway.