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Alumnus Navy pilot returns home after search for father

By Tom Vogel
March 28, 2007

Lt. Cmdr. Brian Danielson '90, now a pilot in the U.S. Navy, was only 18 months old when his father, Capt. Benjamin Franklin Danielson '65, was shot down over Laos in 1969. After a Joint POW/MIA Command ground search last year along the Ho Chi Minh Trail (in which he was the first active-duty service member to participate in a search for an MIA father), Brian has said "enough." In a recent Star Tribune article, Brian says, "It's time. It's time to accept that he's dead and bring him home."

Although the search team failed to find anything, Brian says the effort provided a sense of closure. "Mom and I talked and decided it's time to close the books on this and be thankful for what we have," he says. Brian and his mother established a leadership award at St. Olaf in honor of Benjamin Danielson in 1990.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.