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Families, friends remember victims of helicopter crash in Philippines

By Jan Childs, William Lindner and Carlos Bongioanni, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Thursday, February 28, 2002

They were mountain climbers and Eagle Scouts. Husbands and boyfriends. Athletes and world travelers. Fathers and sons.

Friends and family painted lifescapes Tuesday of the 10 men who were aboard the MH-47 Chinook helicopter that crashed over dark, choppy waters, eight miles offshore in the Philippines last week. Three bodies have been recovered; the other seven are missing and presumed dead.

While a search-and-recovery effort continues, friends, family and comrades shared bittersweet descriptions of the brave and overtly competent men that made up this Special Operations crew.

Although Maj. Curtis Donald Feistner, 34, was commander of Echo Company of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment at K-2 Airbase in Taegu, South Korea, he didn’t brag to his friends and was reluctant to mention his professional or personal accomplishments.

"He never told anyone he went to West Point," said 1st Lt. Emily Gries, deputy adjutant G-1 for the 19th Theater Support Command, referring to the U.S. Military Academy in New York. "He wanted people to know him as a person. He was a humble, quiet achiever."

So quiet, that many did not know how numerous Feistner’s accomplishments were.

At West Point, he followed in the steps of his brother, Alan Feistner, a 1985 West Point graduate. Feistner focused his extra-curricular activities on sports, according to West Point’s Howitzer yearbook. He belonged to the Whitewater Club, the Nordic Ski Team, the cycling club and the mountaineering group. He also found time to run in marathons and work as a scuba instructor.

After leaving West Point as a Distinguished Military Graduate in 1990, newly commissioned 2nd Lt. Feistner won a coveted place as an Army aviator, and then went on to the Special Forces.

"He was a quiet professional, as many people in Special Operations are. Most soldiers in Special Operations are very secure in what they do," said Maj. Robert Feldman, assigned to G-3 Operations for the 19th TSC, who got to know Feistner in the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters at Camp Henry where many Army officers in Taegu live. "But he was personable and treated everyone the same whether or not they were part of his unit."

Officers who live in the Camp Henry bachelor’s quarters share a close, family relationship and often socialize together, said Maj. Clarence Luckett, Deputy G-1 assigned to the 19th TSC.

"His mission didn’t deter him from being part of that family," said Luckett. "He was everybody’s neighbor and always wanted to know how you were doing."

When he saw the news of the chopper on television, brother Bruce Feistner didn’t know at first if his brother was aboard. Either way, he and other relatives knew that Curtis would be affected because he was Echo Company’s commander.

"We all sent e-mails off to Curt and then waited," Bruce Feistner said in a phone interview from Fort Campbell, Ky. "And then my mom got a knock on the door at 12:30 in the morning."

The crash claimed another West Point graduate, Capt. Bartt Owens, 30.

Best friend and best man Jason Wolsefer described Owens in a telephone interview Monday from his Beverly Hills, Calif., home, as someone others looked up to.

Wolsefer said that after seeing how military service made his friend such a great role model, he gained a greater appreciation of military life.

Wolsefer also knew Owens’ wife, Leah, 29. He noted that the two spent half their lives together. They began dating when he was 15 and she, 14, Wolsefer said.

"She was his first girlfriend, and he was her first boyfriend. They were together through high school and college … It’s sad. He was everything to her," Wolsefer said.

"She was the sweetest woman you’d ever meet. Not a bad bone in her body.

"He’s the same way. That’s why they were so good together."

Besides his teen-age sweetheart, Owens leaves behind two daughters, Megan, 4, and Lauren, 2.

Staff Sgt. James Paul Dorrity, 37, of Echo Co., also leaves a young family fatherless. Dorrity’s cousin, Ken Dorrity, said his cousin was called Paul, and was married with two children.

Ken Dorrity described his cousin as "full of life." They talked on the telephone the day after Christmas, he said. The soldier gave no indication he was going to be involved in the war on terrorism.

"I told him we appreciate and were praying for him," Ken Dorrity said. "He thanked me for it and said he didn’t mind having people pray for him."

Dorrity’s father was in the military, his cousin said, so Paul moved around a lot as a youth. But he always came back to the family home in North Carolina for family reunions and gatherings.

Bobby Foshee, father of Sgt. Jeremy D. Foshee, 25, said in a phone interview from a Fort Campbell guesthouse that his son loved the Army because he got to visit exotic places like Australia, Japan and Korea.

The elder Foshee and his wife, Patsy, last saw Jeremy in August when he came home on leave before his unit transferred to Taegu. They talked to him two weeks ago, when he called at 3 a.m. to tell them he was in the Philippines.

"He just told us that they were doing maneuvers with them. We thought it wasn’t very serious," Foshee said. "We had no idea we’d never see him again."

Spc. Thomas F. Allison, 22, one of the youngest members of the Chinook’s crew, talked with his parents less than 24 hours before the crash, said his brother, Scott Allison, who is an Army sergeant.

Scott Allison, 38, is an Army recruiter in Arizona. His kid brother traveled from the family’s home in Tacoma, Wash., after he graduated from high school so Scott could enlist him.

Allison said his brother died doing what he loved.

"With the unit he was in he always knew the chance of this happening," Scott Allison said.

As she prepared to attend the memorial service at Fort Campbell Tuesday morning, Margaret Egnor, the mother of Chief Warrant Officer Jody Egnor, 32, talked about her and her son’s faith in God.

When asked how she felt about Jody’s death, she could say only two words.

"It hurts."

On Okinawa, Air Force Master Sgt. William McDaniel and Staff Sgt. Juan Ridout were mourned Tuesday.

McDaniel is survived by his wife, Debbie, and their 2-year-old daughter. Debbie is pregnant with their second child. McDaniel’s family was notified of his death at their off-base Okinawa residence.

At the First Chance/Last Chance bar just outside Kadena’s Gate 2 in Okinawa City, Japan, servicemembers talked about McDaniel and Ridout, who were pararescuemen with the 320th Special Tactics Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Group at Kadena Air Base.

Servicemembers inscripted a wall-hung guitar as a memorial tribute the day the Chinook crashed. The names McDaniel and Ridout are scrawled in indelible black ink across the guitar’s wood face.

The Kadena community was scheduled to pay tribute to the deaths of Ridout and McDaniel in a memorial service 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Commando West Hangar.

Also presumed dead dead in the crash are Staff Sgt. Bruce A. Rushforth, Jr., 35, of Massachusetts, and Staff Sgt. Kerry W. Frith, 37, of Jamesville, Nev. Families of the men either declined to comment to Stripes, or could not be reached.