By Owen Sexton / owen@chronline.com
Fifty-six years after being killed in action on March 11, 1968, atop Phou Pha Thi mountain in Laos’ Houaphan Province during the Vietnam War, U.S. Air Force Sergeant David Stanley Price finally came home and was laid to rest on Friday, Aug. 30, at Sticklin Greenwood Memorial Park in Centralia.
Price was originally from Centralia and was a Centralia High School graduate.
More than 100 people attended David’s funeral Friday morning, including many of his surviving relatives, members of regional American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars chapters, Patriot Guard riders, former classmates, friends and more.
He was buried with full military honors performed by the Air Force Honor Guard.
“David was my father, though I did not know him, because I was only a year and one month old when he was missing in action,” Stanley Don Price said during the service. “I have heard through my family, through friends, that he was a great man, and I don’t doubt that … We’re here to celebrate him because he was a great man. He gave the ultimate sacrifice of his life for this country.”
On that fateful day in Laos, David was one of 19 service members assigned to guard Lima Site 85 as part of the 1043rd Radar Evaluation Squadron manning the tactical air navigation radar outpost on Phou Pha Thi.
Their outpost was overrun by a North Vietnamese attack, which quickly overwhelmed them. Along with 10 other service members, Price was believed to be either captured or killed, and no remains were recovered as the survivors were forced to retreat.
Though he never knew him personally, Stanley followed in his father’s footsteps and served 21 years in the Air Force, retiring in 2012.
One of Stanley’s older sisters, Bonnie Hansen, spoke next and recalled when her mother first started dating David when she and her two sisters were still children.
“He fell in love with our mother, Judy, and he also fell in love with her three little girls. The feelings were mutual, and we started calling him Daddy Dave even before they were married,” Hansen said.
They married on Jan. 16, 1965, and David officially adopted Judy’s daughters.
“Sergeant David Stanley Price, Daddy Dave, we love you, we miss you, and we welcome you home,” Hansen added.
Her older sister, Brenda Fuller, thanked everyone for coming to celebrate her father’s life and welcome him home.
“Over 56 years ago, my mother received a call telling her that her husband was missing in action. I remember that day because I was sitting on the floor underneath the ironing board where my mom was ironing, and watched her face,” Fuller said.
After more than five decades, Fuller had accepted that she might never learn what actually happened to her father.
That’s why she could hardly believe it when, in June, she received a phone call from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) saying they had discovered remains in Laos and identified them as her father’s.
“Having him here on earth and not knowing what happened for sure was something that bothered us all,” Fuller said. “Now we know. We know that he died that day on the mountain. We know that now with our heavenly father and our mom.”
Armed Forces Medical Examiner System scientists used mitochondrial DNA analysis in conjunction with the DPAA using circ*mstantial evidence to positively identify the remains discovered last year as Price’s.
Price’s family was previously unsure where his remains might have been as in 2003 remains of one of Price’s fellow service members were discovered on a ledge of Phou Pha Thi.
Other boots and U.S. service member items were also discovered, but it was unknown if Price’s remains were still there or if he had possibly actually survived the attack and was taken to a prison camp in Russia at the time.
Prior to this, the DPAA had already started joint recovery operations with the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR) in 1994, though no remains were found at the time.
Between 1994 and 2009, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam also helped assist the DPAA and LPDR, pursuing dozens of witness leads and conducting interviews with those involved in the March 11, 1968 attack.
Despite these combined efforts, it wasn’t until 2023 when DPAA personnel along with partner organization members discovered unexploded ordinance and other battle-related materials along with possible human remains from a research site.
“Today, Price is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, and on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.,” the DPAA said in a news release. “A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.”
A plaque honoring Price was placed on the Veterans Memorial Museum Wall of Honor, located outside the building in Chehalis, in the early 2000s. The plaque was paid for by the Centralia High School Class of 1959.
Judy Outland, a representative from the class 1959, told The Chronicle in 2005 that she helped raise money for the project when the museum opened.
"He was a wonderful guy," Outland said of Price at the time, though she admitted she could remember few other details from her high school days.
According to the 1959 yearbook, the Skookum Wawa, Price was a member of the band for four years, and during his junior and senior years, he played in concerts and was a member of the pep band.
He was also president of the service club his senior year and president of the projectionists club his junior year.
In the back of the yearbook, seniors wrote one thing they'd do at the end of their high school careers.
"I, David Price, will all of the paper stuffed down my sousaphone to the Boys "C" Club (which consisted of the school's athletic letter winners)," Price wrote in 1959.
