FAMILY TO LAY UNCERTAINTY TO REST WITH VIETNAM MIA

For Mark Lane Stephensen II, the burial of his father's remains Friday in the Riverton City Cemetery will be admittedly bittersweet - despite a hometown funeral before family and friends and with full military rites. It's a matter of being better late than never - even though the 21-year period that Air Force Col. Mark L. Stephensen was listed as a missing-in-action casualty of the Vietnam War often seemed to approach "never" standards.

"There's a sense of satisfaction that he is finally being afforded something he deserved 21 years ago," said Mark Stephensen II.His father disappeared in 1967 after returning home from an aborted reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam. His plane reportedly crashed, but the whereabouts of Col. Stephensen were unknown for more than two decades - until his remains were recovered and returned by the Vietnamese and identified earlier this summer.

The younger Stephensen was 12 years old - with younger siblings of ages 10, 8 and 4 - when his father became a Vietnam War MIA. But he held onto earlier recollections of his father. "Like any son of an Air Force pilot, I lived and ate and slept with a hero," he said.

Living with the possibility of disaster often meant facing the unknown with rationalizations. "That couldn't happen - not to my Dad, not to my family."

But it did happen to Col. Stephensen and to his family - a tragedy that took a generation to become resolved. "Things that have been buried very deeply over the years will finally be reconciled," said Mark Stephensen II in a telephone interview from his Boise office. "The agonizing over the years have softened the emotions."

But not necessarily the loss.

*** Col. Stephensen was born May 29, 1930; the Riverton native being the eighth of 10 children of Hazel Giles and Stephen F. Stephensen. A Jordan High graduate, he attended Brigham Young University until he followed the footsteps of an older brother by enlisting in the Air Force in 1950.

His military training - including specialization in reconnaissance - took him throughout the United States and even afforded him a chance to march as a cadet in the inaugural parade for President Dwight Eisenhower.

He married Victoria Christopher in 1954; she now resides in Denver. They are the parents of four children: Mark Lane, Lance Edward, Kristen Rae and Kyler Maren - the boys living in the Boise area and the girls living in Colorado. He is also survived by four grandchildren.