More than 50 years after it was commissioned, a painting showing the daughters of Air Force Colonel Arthur Mearns writing a letter and praying for his safe return is presented to his wife Pat and daughters Missy and Frances.
The emotional ceremony included a missing man fly over, a tribute to the Air Force pilot who was shot down over Vietnam in 1966.
“It's bringing back so much and there's so much good but there's also sadness for all the families whose sons and husband didn't come home,” said Pat.
Stationed in Japan during the Vietnam War Mearns, who was a Major at the time, was approaching his 100th mission, which meant his family could soon return to the U.S.
“We were excited about him coming home," Pat, told NBC 7.
But it was on that near final mission on Veterans Day in 1966 that his plane was hit by enemy fire. “His airplane was completely on fire, so he bailed out,” said Pat. His wingmen didn't know if he had survived.
His widow and daughters kept hope alive. “We said prayer for our father every day, we sent packages and letters,” said Frances.
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Pat believed her husband was missing in action and worked tirelessly on behalf of service members who were MIA and POWs. She even moved to Washington D.C. for a time.
For that effort, two and a half years after his plane was shot down, the Pentagon commissioned a portrait of the Mearns two daughters.
Her work so admired by a U.S. Congressman on the Armed Services Committee that he kept a copy of the painting in his office for years as a reminder of service members who were still Missing in Action and Prisoners of War.
More than a decade later when the Vietnam War ended Pat learned what had happened to her husband. “He was killed in action,” she said all those years ago in 1966.
When the Congressman died, the decision was made to have the portrait returned to the Mearns Family in Coronado.
And on August 21, 2018, the Mearns' family were presented with the painting at Coronado’s Star Park which brought back so many emotional memories.
“It really did, it makes us cry," said Missy. “I just felt enveloped in the love and the support. That's what was really incredible."
And decades after the war in Vietnam ended Pat wants Vietnam veterans and her late husband to know, “He was a hero and so are they.”
And so the painting will hang in the Veterans Museum in Balboa Park as a reminder of the sacrifices of the families who lost loved ones in Vietnam.
