On Friday, Aug. 30, at 11 a.m. at the Greenwood Cemetery in Centralia, U.S. Air Force Sergeant David S. Price will finally be laid to rest with full military honors more than 56 years after he was killed in action during the Vietnam War in a battle on March 11, 1968, atop Phou Pha Thi mountain in Laos’ Houaphan Province.
Price was originally from Centralia and was a graduate of Centralia High School.
On that fateful day in Laos, he was one of 19 service members assigned to guard Lima Site 85, a tactical air navigation radar outpost on the mountain when it was overrun by a North Vietnamese attack. Along with 10 other service members, Price was killed, and his remains were not recovered as the survivors were forced to retreat.
“After 56 years, you don’t think you’re ever going to find anything out. It’s been too long,” Price’s daughter, Brenda Fuller, of Goshen, Utah, told The Chronicle in a phone call on Thursday, Aug. 8.
Fuller was only 7 years old when she lost her father, who was 26 when he died. Even though everyone told the family that Price died during the battle, Fuller said she never really got any closure.
“Growing up, even into my adult years, you don’t really believe that he’s dead if you don’t have remains. He could be anywhere, and you make up stories in your head about where he could be, why he hasn’t come back,” Fuller said. “Now, to have the knowledge that yeah, he actually is dead and he died back then, all those stories can kind of melt away. It’s nice to have the truth.”
The public is invited to attend Price’s funeral service at Greenwood Cemetery on Aug. 30. Prior to the service, the public is also invited to take to the streets and wave flags for his funeral procession, which will depart at 10:15 a.m. from the Sticklin Funeral Chapel, located at 1437 S. Gold Street.
From the chapel, the procession will head west on Fair Street, then north on Kresky Avenue and continuing north when Kresky turns into Tower Avenue, according to Sticklin Funeral Director Mindy Rocha-Barella.
The procession will continue on Tower Avenue until turning west on Main Street and continuing west when Main turns into Harrison Avenue. It will then turn north on Johnson Road before turning west on Reynolds Road to Van Wormer Street, where Greenwood Cemetery is located.
Price’s remains will be arriving from Hawaii on Aug. 29 in Portland. A procession will take Price from Portland International Airport to Stricklin Funeral Home in preparation for his funeral.
The mystery of what happened to Price was solved when the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced it had finally identified Price’s remains, according to a July 21 news release. Fuller and the rest of her family got the news about a month before the release.
“They called me on June 24, and I didn’t recognize the number and thought it was a spam call … I was actually floored. It took me a minute to believe what she was actually saying because it’s been 56 years,” Fuller said.
Armed Forces Medical Examiner System scientists used mitochondrial DNA analysis in conjunction with the DPAA using circumstantial 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 release stated. “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.
