Remembering on Memorial Day a note found in a Cokesbury Hymn Book decades ago:
“David and ——— sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g” it read, and I realized David Coker’s situation no different than mine — we each had three sisters and such teases were not uncommon.
The Butler siblings attended Trinity Methodist Church at Chester & Paris streets, as did David, Judy, Donnie Sue and Ginger.
David and I weren’t pals — he was a Boy Scout, quiet, respectful and really bright; I leaned in the opposite direction.
But we both had those sisters who sometimes aggravated us, other times encouraged us, and helped shape us.
Two years older, I lost track of David after leaving Bolton High and becoming less and less a regular at Trinity. Our paths merged again in Spring 1971.
Cecil Williams, city editor, walked up to my desk, handed this then-green Town Talk reporter a piece of paper and said “see what you can get on this for today’s edition.”
The paper was off the AP teletype and was a daily recap of identified Vietnam War casualties. Among those listed — Capt. David L. Coker Jr., 26, Alexandria, La. KIA .
I told Cecil what I knew — David had three sisters, his father ”Lang” worked for the City of Alexandria — and asked him to please use another reporter. He did and someone else reported, the only assignment I turned down in a long career.
Some of that story and some of what I learned later:
No draft for David, he volunteered for Army aviation duty in 1966 and was a few days from completing a second tour when his helicopter was shot down.
He had volunteered to attempt rescue of another helicopter crew in Quang Tri Province.
During his time in country he had started a Scout unit for South Vietnamese boys as well as one in Australia.
Call sign “Charlie Horse,” David was a rotary wing unit commander with the 5th Air Cavalry, 5th Infantry Division.
His OH-58 Kiowa was one of 168 helicopters lost in a months-long operation against North Vietnamese Army infiltration from Laos.
According to the sequential listings on the Memorial Wall in Washington, a 23-year-old tail gunner sergeant from Michigan preceded David the same day, March 24, 1971, and a 21-year-old PFC from New Mexico came after David the same day.
The sergeant was confirmed killed but body never recovered; the reconnaissance private was killed by an explosive device. Both were listed as missing in action and are memorialized at a cemetery in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu.
David’s final resting place is a cemetery just down the road from my current home. His headstone includes “I am flying with God.”
Back to Cokesbury:
Somewhere in it is a hymn we often sang with a verse, as best I recall, “I shall wing my flight to worlds unknown, I shall align with Him on high.”
Fly, David, fly.