Nepenthe Art Gallery Grand Opening

GRAND OPENING

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF HEENEY Nepenthe Gallery recently celebrated the grand opening of its new Hollin Hall shopping center location. The gallery will feature artwork by both local/emerging and established artists. A custom frame shop and photographer Reneé C. Gage’s personal art studio will also be on-site. For more information, please visit www.nepenthegallery.com.

Judy Heiser "Roads to Everywhere" Mixed media on canvas 40x30

Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 11am-6pm and by appointment 7918 Fort Hunt Road Alexandria VA 22308 Ph: 571-347-7961 www.nepenthegallery.com

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Left to Right: Pat Scannon, M.D., Ph.D. Derek Abbey, Ph.D., Dr. Colin Colbourn of Project Recover

UNTIL THEY ALL COME HOME

THE PROJECT RECOVER STORY

Story by Wesley Jefferies | Photography by Jonathan Thorpe

“I was sort of a knucklehead. I started going into the mangrove swamps by myself and I got into a predicament one day. I was carrying about 70 pounds of gear because I knew there had to be a plane in this mangrove. I had all kinds of cameras and I had way too much stuff - and mangroves are complex jungle structures where you have to crawl sideways and so on - and I didn’t bring any water! 70 pounds of gear and no water! I was rapidly becoming dehydrated. But I made it.”

A reserved and thoughtful man with a neatly-trimmed beard and professorial air, gently sipping on his coffee on a cool spring morning, Dr. Scannon looks every bit the part of the Victorian gentleman adventurer of ages past. As our conversation in the coffeehouse gets underway, he subtly studies his surroundings and the people around him, observing the layout of the room. He is crisp and precise in his speech and word choice, but in the kindly and avuncular manner of a man who might be teaching his nephews how to play baseball for the first time. Behind his soft-spoken demeanor is nerves of steel which served him well in his earliest expeditions where he would often venture on his own into waters or swamp jungles accompanied perhaps only by a local guide or translator. The origins of his vision and passion began while he was on holiday in the Palau archipelago. He was invited to go scuba diving with some friends in the local waters and they came across the remains of a Japanese ship that was sunk in 1944 by a daring young Navy pilot known as Lt. George Bush. His curiosity about other sea and jungle wreckages was piqued. After he came across the wing of the American B-24 bomber in the shallow waters of the mangrove swamp, he found a deeper and more meaningful passion that has driven him ever since; finding and returning the remains of the servicemen who bravely flew in these aircraft and gave the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of their homeland and the free world.

Top: Heaven Can Wait Crew, Below: Heaven Can Wait B-24 widow of the deceased veteran or their next of kin to receive a folded U.S. flag draped over the casket or urn containing the veteran’s remains. In this instance, Dr. Scannon and his team bring the flag to the site where they had originally fallen in combat before presenting it to the family after decades of waiting. “You never forget. Every family who has someone missing in action has a special place in their home dedicated to that person, whether it’s photos or a cabinet where there are memorabilia. He’s revered from generation to generation. There’s an increasing mystery. And the kids grow up with this.” When Project Recover is able to reunite the remains of a serviceman with his family, there is what Dr. Scannon refers to as a ‘suspended grief’ that is both painful and cathartic. “It’s sad,” he explains, “but it’s what I call a joyful sadness. Finally, they know.” Listening to Dr. Scannon share his vision and passion, one is reminded of a scene from Homer’s Odyssey where the spirit of Elenor, a comrade-in-arms of Odysseus who had fallen on a distant island during a retreat, pleads with him, “not to leave me there unwept and unburied … raise a mound for me by the shore of the grey sea, in the memory of an unfortunate

It was on a solo expedition to the mangrove swamp, where he risked his life overpacking and forgetting to bring any water, where he considered that wandering alone in marshes and jungles was not the most prudent strategy. “I went two or three years by myself and that’s probably not a good thing to do when you’re in a swamp. I kind of realized maybe it’s better to have a team. So I started to put a team together.” Dr. Scannon paused for a moment in our conversation and looked away. “Actually, I was really doing a sort of a strange thing. I didn’t think anybody would be interested. I would come back from a dive dirty and muddy and all the tourists would be clean. I would stink from the swamp. But it turns out, I was able to pull a team together.” The volunteers he originally assembled evolved to become what is now Project Recover, a non-profit organization that works to retrieve and repatriate the remains of American servicemen who have gone missing in action (MIA) since the Second World War. Starting as an amateur archaeological endeavor, Project Recover has grown to play a critical role in bringing closure and confirmation to those families whose loved ones went missing during combat operations. When a correspondent asked him about the archaeological aspects of his project, Dr. Scannon was keen to emphasize that, “we don’t care so much about the wreckage. It’s not our target. The wreckage is a tombstone - it’s a marker.” As soon as they encounter such a finding, they prepare to look for the remains of the servicemen who might have perished at the site and for their potential repatriation to their homeland and their reburial with their families. "We hold a ceremony where we bring American flags for each person who is missing,” Dr. Scannon explains as he grips his coffee mug and stares into its swirls. At military funerals, it is a common practice for the man, so that those yet to be will know the place.” By honoring the dead, Project Recover is also honoring their families, their communities and the future generations yet to come.

Besides the expertise and technology that Project Recover leverages to identify potential locations for missing remains, the team also relies on a significant degree of navigating and interacting with social networks in the local communities that experienced the war. This is one of the more delicate tasks facing the team as they must start with building trusting and respectful relationships with these communities while also

considering the painful legacies that historical memory of invasion and occupation may have embedded in the local consciousness.

This is where our conversation becomes a little tenser.

The worst atrocities committed against American servicemen during World War II were in the Pacific theater. The cruelty and depravity inflicted on these brave young warriors, some of whom lied about their age to enlist in the U.S. military, were almost without parallel in the history of modern war. Captured U.S. troops who surrendered or were captured in the Pacific were often tortured and murdered. When a missing serviceman survived being downed, the team looks for evidence of killing fields rather than wreckages. Just as having war veterans share the stories of what they have endured can be a sensitive task, requiring a certain degree of diplomacy and respectful empathy, encouraging village elders and other surviving eyewitnesses of wartime atrocities to be forthcoming about war crimes can be a difficult and delicate endeavor. It is nonetheless one that is uniquely suited for Dr. Scannon’s cool temperament, studious attention to detail and deliberate and precise manner. “In a sense, time is both working with us and against us,” says Dr. Colin Colbourn, Project Recover’s Lead Historian. “Earlier, we could not have done this because the memories of the war were still fresher in everyone’s minds. They were raw.” Yet the passage of time also means the remains of missing servicemen and the sites where they had their last moments are being worn away by the elements as the decades pass on. There is a moral and temporal urgency to Project Recover’s work. And the passage of time does not heal all wounds. “The families never forget. It’s weight in your heart that you cannot explain,” Dr. Scannon stresses. “It’s not about the MIA statistics. It’s about their loved one, their unresolved grief.” The families of fallen heroes have also made unimaginable sacrifices for the defense of their homeland and the free world. It is at the core of Project Recover’s mission to recognize and honor them by finding and bringing them home. Donate at projectrecover.org