U.S. Air Force Col. Wayne B. Wolfkeil was shot down in Laos on Aug. 6, 1968, during the Vietnam War. His remains were never recovered.
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Wayne B. Wolfkeil was the quarterback in his senior year at Hanover Township High School in 1949, and a reserve runing back at Penn State where he graduated in 1954.
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Ten years after being shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War, U.S. Air Force Col. Wayne Benjamin Wolfkeil was officially declared dead by the U.S. Defense Department in June 1979.
A veteran memorial stone bearing the name of Wolfkeil was placed in Hanover Green Cemetery in Hanover Township following a memorial service held in the Hanover Green Meeting House/Chapel the same month he was declared dead.
Having a square jaw, broad shoulders and being taller than most of the young men he grew up with in Hanover Township, Wolfkeil could have been a movie star.
Instead, the Hanover Township all-scholastic in football, basketball and baseball who graduated in 1950 received a scholarship to play football at Penn State.
During his sophomore year at Penn State, Wolfkeil married his high school sweetheart, Anne M. Zapotok, with the marriage ceremony at Nativity B.V.M. Church in Plymouth being held on July 19, 1951.
One could imagine Wolfkeil would often walk from his home on Church Street in Hanover Green to Zapotok’s home on Phillips Street in Lyndwood to be together as young lovers.
After college graduation, Wolfkeil was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force as his bride was a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Corps stationed at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Wolfkeil was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, Suffolk, Long Island, NY., Minot in North Dakota, Hancock Field in Stewart, N.Y., Colorado Springs, Colo., and at a United States base in Greenland.
By 1962, Wolfkeil held the rank of major.
“Major Wolfkeil and another Air Force officer made news in 1962 when they were ejected from a crippled jet near Oneida Lake, Syracuse, N.Y. The two fliers parachuted 5,000 feet to safety but the plane crashed into the lake,” reported the Times Leader Aug. 13, 1962.
While stationed at Colorado Springs with his wife and children, Wolfkeil was sent to Vietnam in July 1968.
Six weeks after arriving, Wolfkeil was shot down while flying an A-1H Skyraider over Laos, about 25 miles west of the South Vietnamese city of Dak To.
According to the U.S. Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Wolfkeil was one of a four-plane combat mission over western Laos on Aug. 9, 1968. Witnesses in other aircraft reported while Wolfkeil made a pass over his target, his Skyraider plane took a sharp turn and crashed. No parachute was observed by the witnesses in the three other planes.
While declared Missing in Action, Wolfkeil was promoted to the rank of colonel.
His wife, Anne Wolfkeil, was promoted to corporal and remained in Colorado Springs, where she died Oct. 23, 2001. She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
Wolfkeil’s remains have never been recovered.