Comments/Citation:
US Air Force Capt Mary Therese Klinker, Vietnam Veteran, Native of Lafayette, Indiana.
US Air Force Captain Mary Therese Klinker was a casualty of the Vietnam War. As a member of the Air Force Reserve, CPT Klinker served our country until April 4th, 1975 in Binh Hoa, South Vietnam. She was 27 years old and was not married. Mary died when her plane crashed. Her body was recovered. Mary was born on October 3rd, 1947 in Lafayette, Indiana. CPT Klinker is on panel 01W, line 122 of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.
US Air Force Capt Klinker was a flight nurse with the 10th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron temporarily assigned to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, was on the C-5A Galaxy which crahsed on April 4 outside Saigon while evacuating Vietnamese orphans. This is known as the Operation Babylift crash. From Lafayette, Indiana, she was 27. She was posthumously awarded the Airman's Medal for Heroism and the Meritorious Service Medal.
Layfayette Leader, May 1, 1975. Funeral Services for Capt Mary T Klinker, 27, an Air Force Flight Nurse killed in the April 3rd crash of a U.S. C5A Galaxy transport plane carrying Vietnamese orphans to the United States, were held at 10am Saturday in St Lawrence Catholic Church. The Reverend Edwin Deane OFM, of Dayton, Ohio, and the Reverend Clair Bourdereaux OFM Officiated and the internment was in Saint Boniface Cemetery with Military gravesite rites by the Grissom AFB Honor Guard.
The daughter of Mr and Mrs Paul Klinker of 3553 Woodmar Court. The Captain ahd been officially listed as missing since April 5. Affiliated with the 10th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron out of Travis AFB on California, she had served in the Air Force since 1969 as a flight nurse, instructor and flight examiner. A native of Lafayette, she had lived here most of her life, graduating from St Lawrence Elementary Central Catholic High School and St Elizabeth School of Nursing. Prior to joining the Air Force, she had worked for a year in St Elizabeth Hospital. Capt Klinker was a member of St Lawrence Church, the Indiana State Nurses Association and St Elizabeth Nursing Alumni Association.
Surviving with the parents are four brothers, Richard P. of Lafayette, David J. of Greensboro, NC, James D and Donald J, both of West Lafayette and a Sister, Mrs Charles E Carolyn Cancik Jr of Scottsdale, Arizona. Hippensteel Funeral Home was in charge of the local arrangements.
In Memory: Capt Mary Klinker was a flight nurse assigned to the 22nd Aircraft Squadron at Clark Air Base in the Philippines in 1974. As Saigon fell, President Gerald Ford ordered an airlift of all in-country orphans, many of whom had American fathers, to the United States for asylum and adoption. The 22nd, with its motto of 'Anything, Anywhere, Anytime,' was given the task of bringing those children from Vietnam to the Philippines. Klinker volunteered for the humanitarian effort, which became known as Operation Babylift. Evacuating hundreds of orphans would prove difficult in many ways. At one makeshift orphanage in a two-story French colonial villa, nurse LeAnn Thiemann recalled a 'sea of babies' across the floor, lying on mats crying, cooing, playing, and sleeping. The Vietnamese caregivers prepared the little ones for their journey by dressing them in 'lace, ruffled panties, patent leather shoes,' Thieman said. After leaving the orphanages, each group of babies was then transported to Tan Son Nhut Air Base for evacuation. The aircraft selected for this mission were C-5A Galaxy cargo planes, big enough to drive a truck into and stable enough to fly about 25 cardboard boxes holding two or three babies apiece. Thieman, who worked on the flight that followed Klinker's, recounts the apprehension that she and her colleagues felt: 'We took our seats for the takeoff, and the true terror began. Would we be shot down? Would we even get off the ground?' At 3 p.m. on April 3, 1975, the initial mission flight took off with Capt. Dennis 'Bud' Traynor at the controls, a crew of 16, seven attendants including Klinker, and 145 orphans. At 4:13, the lower rear fuselage was torn apart, and Traynor 'had to invent a technique for managing a seemingly unmanageable aircraft,' according to John L. Frisbee of Air Force Magazine. In the ensuing crash, the 27-year-old Klinker, from Lafayette, Ind., became the last nurse and the only member of the Air Force Nurse Corps to be killed in Vietnam. She received the Airman's Medal and a Meritorious Service Medal and is listed on Panel O1W Row 122 of The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. Raymond Johnson, Jr.
Thank you Mary Klinker for being there for the lost children of Vietnam. Vietnamese Adoptee, Wisconsin, April 1975, Tim Hoye, hoyetj@hotmail.com.
She served with the 22nd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, Clark AFB, Phillipines, USAF.
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