LTC Henry Brauner
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LTC Henry Brauner
It takes a solid team to return valor!
LTC Brauner was serving with the 7th Air Force as a navigator on an AC-130 ‘Spectre’ gunship on a mission over southern Laos on 29 March 1972.
The gunship and its 14 member crew were hit by a surface-to-air missile and all on board were declared Missing in Action.
LTC Brauner’s daughters were 7 and 10 years old.
On 17 June 2010 he was honored in a group burial of recovered remains at Arlington National Cemetery.
His daughters were 45 and 48 years old.
Somewhere along the way his burial flag and Purple Heart were separated from the family and ended up at the Goodwill in Tucson, where the staff chose not to place the items on the sales floor and reached out to us for help.
When we contacted Kristin she was understandably moved beyond measure to know that her father’s items had been considered important enough that action was undertaken to find his family.
Before Alex and Derek at Goodwill came along, Kristin had nothing tangible of her father’s to connect with him and his memory. She said, ’It will be 50 years in March since my father went missing, and I can’t believe that all these years later his things have come back to me!’
Here are Alex and Derek from Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona before shipping LTC Brauner’s shadowbox and Purple Heart to Kristin, and above you can see a very big smile from Kristin upon receiving it.
It takes a solid team to return Valor!
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