A Poignant Snapshot Of 4 Men and an Era

Their loss made headlines. But their remains and those of seven Vietnamese with them went undiscovered for 25 years, until the crash site was located by a U.S. casualty team in 1996.

Two years later, the site was excavated, and artifacts and fragmentary remains were recovered. In 2003, the Newseum, then in the process of constructing its new building on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, offered, at Pyle's request, to inter the remains in its Journalists Memorial gallery.

"This was an exception . . . for an exceptional case," said Susan Bennett, the Newseum's deputy director.

The fragments are in a stainless-steel box beneath a metal nameplate set in the floor of the memorial gallery at the foot of a towering glass wall bearing the names of 1,843 journalists who have perished doing their jobs since 1837.

The memorial will be dedicated today. The Newseum opens officially next Friday.

"All these years, we've never forgotten them," Esper, 75, who now teaches at the University of West Virginia, said of his four friends. "We talk about them all the time. And we remember them all the time. . . . They didn't have to get on that helicopter. They knew it was very dangerous."

Pyle and Faas were obsessed with the fate of the four men. They traveled to the excavation site and in 2003 published a book about the incident, "Lost Over Laos."

"It's a resolution to a long story that needed to have an ending," Pyle said yesterday. "This makes it all worth doing."

As Faas, in his electric wheelchair, made his way to the microphone to speak, he talked of old times.

"It's wonderful to see so many aged faces of the good and bad days of old Saigon," he said.

He spoke about his visit by helicopter to the crash site with Pyle.

"It almost felt like a combat assignment," he said. "The old adrenaline in me rose . . . just like the old days."