TEXARKANA, Texas -- For local resident Thomas Morrissey, a recent trip to West Virginia proved to be as nostalgic as it was nearly tragic.
As a former Army combat helicopter pilot who served in the Vietnam War, Morrissey journeyed to West Virginia in June with several of his grandchildren and other young relatives to an air show. The event allowed guests to fly aboard historic aircraft.
Morrissey treated his family to a ride aboard a vintage Huey helicopter, which he flew in Vietnam. Later, en route to Texarkana, the family learned the same helicopter they rode in mysteriously crashed, killing six passengers.
"The crash happened June 22, not long after we left, and no one was sure why or what caused it," Morrissey said. "I had flown a Huey during the war, and some were still be used here to help fight forest fires."
A preliminary investigation determined the helicopter had crashed into a rock face shortly after takeoff.
For Morrissey, the crash reminded him of the dangers he faced in Vietnam.
However for Morrissey, having been a combat pilot, the recent fatal circumstance was somewhat something he had already faced for a whole year in Vietnam.
"For the first half of my year-long tour, I flew daylight combat operations, and then night operations for the other half," Morrissey said. "We went after Vietcong supply shipment routes all along what was referred to as Highway 13 (in far south Vietnam near Ho Chi Minh City). "We tried searching for these supply line routes, which were running south all along the western edge of Vietnam."
Morrissey was born in Miami but went to elementary school locally for a couple of years before leaving the area. He returned to the Texarkana area in 2018.
"I've actually owned property in this area all my life," he said.
Upon finishing high school back east, Morrissey said he had two years of college -- one year in Miami and the other in Minnesota during one of the state's most severe snow seasons.
"I was about 20 years old and that's about when I decided that I wanted to go to flight school and become an airline pilot," he said.
About the same time, Morrissey, who was close to being drafted, enlisted to become a volunteer warrant officer in flight training.
"I enlisted in the Army in March of 1969, and I first went to Fort Polk, Louisiana, for basic training," he said. "Then it was on to Fort Walter in Texas and then to Fort Rucker in Alabama."
Morrissey had his sights set on flying fixed-winged aircraft, but Fort Rucker was training future helicopter pilots -- a situation that ran counter to Morrissey's plan to become a civilian airline pilot.
"The helicopter was my only option, and to me that was kind of nerve wracking," he said, since helicopter piloting requires the use of both hands and feet.
During one combat mission in Vietnam, Morrissey learned that an enemy bullet had lodged near the feet of a side gunner and that the Huey had received multiple strikes from enemy shells, primarily on the fuselage and main rotors. However, not all flights were dangerous, Morrissey said.
"There were the much more sought-after flight missions which involved picking up steaks for our air unit's parties, and we also made last-minute beer runs to combat units standing down."
On a lighter note, Morrissey recalled seeing his crew chief standing on their Huey's skids while the copter was at 1,500 feet.
"I glanced up to see him asking me if I wanted the windshield cleaned," he said.
After his year-long deployment to Vietnam, Morrissey, now age 23, returned to the U.S. at San Francisco International Airport in 1971. He was surprised to learn that the commercial airlines industry had a surplus of pilots and were not in the market for more.
"My first day back home, I was also refused service for a beer because I didn't have a valid driver's license," he said. "I returned to college to study political science, then photography, before turning to sculpture and creating forms that somehow looked similar to burned-out, twisted fragments of steel, perhaps even images of blown bridges and spent aircraft. Who knows?"
However, it would be Morrissey's study of photography that would pay off, because it would aid him to write and publish in 200o the picture book "Between the Lines." The publication focuses on the National Vietnam Veterans War Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
"I began photographing the memorial in 1983, and with that being my first encounter with that black granite wall, I didn't know what to expect from there," he said. "I left there that first day, after shooting 15 rolls of film, knowing that I would always return."
From that point forward, Morrissey said the picture project set its own course.
"The idea for 'Between the Lines' came to me while I was reviewing letters I had sent home, which I had written while I was in Vietnam," he said.
The letters prompted Morrissey to make additional photographic trips to the memorial site between 1983 and 1999.
"My visits to The Wall, have allowed me to meet and get to know the women and men who served as combat nurses, as soldiers, as Red Cross volunteers as doctors and even as combat photographers," Morrissey said. "I have also grown to recognize the pain my mother must have felt the day she brought me, her only child, to Miami International Airport to leave for that trip across the Pacific.
"I believe it was one of those moments, furnished by God, to help us make it through the day."
Thomas Morrissey of Texarkana helps to pilot a Vietnam War-era Huey helicopter during an air show in June 2022 in West Virginia. Morrissey, an Army veteran, was a Huey pilot in Southeast Asia in 1971. (Photo courtesy Tom Morrissey)