Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association Members Meet Vietnam War Orphan, Daughter of Fallen Hero

ARLINGTON, Texas – April 7, 2021 – PRLog — Posted Courtesy of Wright Enterprises San Francisco~Dallas Community Spotlight~~~

Members of the Vietnam Veterans Helicopter Pilots met with a Vietnam War Orphan, the daughter of Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr. Wednesday to share details of the association’s mission.  Jackie Wright, the eldest of the four children of Sp5 Wright, found the organization over the Internet.

Sp5 Wright died serving as an honor guard for the man who is deemed as “the architect of the Vietnam War,” then U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.  The U.S. Army helicopter crash in the Mekong River happened on March 9, 1964 taking the lives of 33-year-old Sp5 Wright and 20-year-old PFC John Francis Shea, at a time when the soldiers in Vietnam were called advisors.

“It was an honor for me to meet with soldiers who served in Vietnam,” said Jackie Wright, a filmmaker, whose short documentary, “Love Separated in Life…Love Reunited in Honor,” won Columbia, South Carolina’s Freedom Festival International Award for Best Veteran Short Documentary; won The Houston International Film Festival Best Short; and screened at the San Francisco Black Film Festival, The San Francisco Veterans Film Festival, The Oakland International Film Festival, and the San Diego Black Film Festival . “My father was a member of the 114^th Aviation Company out of Fort Knox, Kentucky and the work of crew members was imperative for the work of pilots.”

In the documentary, Wright of San Francisco at the time and her three siblings, Joe Wright of Columbus, Georgia, a U.S. Army Veteran; Stanley Wright of Orangeburg, South Carolina;  and Phyllis Wright Cameron of Antioch, California, find out that the airbase of the 114^th Aviation Company was named after a pilot, 1Lt. Kenneth A. Shannon and their father, Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr., a Helicopter Crew Chief.  The airbase in Vinh Long, Vietnam was named the Shannon Wright Compound.  More about the film that chronicles the March 2014 exhumation of Wright from a segregated cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida  and reburial at Arlington National Cemetery with his beloved wife Ouida Fay Wright during the 50^th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement and the 150^th Anniversary of Arlington Cemetery, can be found at www.lovereunited.org.

Art Price, Vice President of VHPA and Mike Sheuerman, VHPA Membership Chairman and Scholarship Committee Chairman, met with Wright along with Office Manager, Sherry Rodgers.  While admiring the work of Joe Kline that graces the entrance of the office, the three met Lou Castillo, who served as a U.S. Marine in the 3^rd Marine Division and 2^nd Supply Battalion 1972-1975.

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Photo by Sherrie Rodgers: Jackie Wright, Mike Sheuerman, Lou Castillo and Art Price

admire art by Joe Kline.