Copyright Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
Tom Scheurich Jr. was playing in the front yard of his Virginia Beach home with his three sisters on March 3, 1968, when a black car pulled up. Navy representatives were there to deliver the news that his father, Capt. Thomas Edwin Scheurich, was missing in action in Vietnam. His mother broke down in tears. He and his siblings were stunned. They waited for word about his whereabouts, but it never came. This past May 23 — over 57 years later — Scheurich Jr. received a call that his father’s remains had been identified at a crash site atop of an island just 13 kilometers from Scheurich’s bombing target in Cẩm Phả. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency would finally bring Capt. Scheurich home. He was assigned to Attack Squadron 35, Air Wing 9. He chartered a plane from Naval Station Oceana in December 1967 and deployed aboard the USS Enterprise. He sent valentines to his family in Virginia Beach just two weeks before his disappearance. Forensics showed the A-6 that Scheurich had been piloting on the evening of March 1, 1968, had dropped its bombs and headed back to base. But Scheurich and the aircraft’s bombardier-navigator, Lt. Richard Lannom, never returned. Decades later, an eyewitness account of a plane crash from that night led investigators to the site. Lannom’s remains were identified in 2018. Six excavations later, additional remains were recovered in 2024, only 40 yards from where his plane made impact. Early this year, Scheurich’s remains were identified. His surviving children — son Tom and daughter Marianne — and their families are planning his homecoming. Scheurich’s remains will be repatriated to Virginia and buried Nov. 14 at Arlington National Cemetery. A father’s legacy carried on Tom Scheurich Jr. grew up hearing stories about the father he knew for seven years before his deployment. “My dad was a really, really smart farm kid,” Scheurich Jr. said. “He was a very easygoing, mild mannered person — a very loving, caring guy.” The elder Scheurich grew up in rural Nebraska. His father encouraged him to take up the family business, but Scheurich had dreams beyond farming. Family lore says he pointed at the sky when planes flew overhead and said, “I want to do that.” He graduated early from high school and enrolled in a Naval Cadet program to become a pilot. He was attending bomb dropping school near Atlantic City when he met his future wife, Eileen, at a local bebop venue. They had four children: Ellen, Tom Jr., Marianne and Margurite. By all accounts, Scheurich was an all-American guy. He was 6-foot-4 with thick dark brown hair. He was a beloved husband and father. He built a skiff from scratch. He was good at math. He was musically gifted — a singer and self-taught banjo and accordion player who enjoyed performing with his Dixieland band, Slow Roll Seven. One of Scheurich Jr.’s most vivid memories of his father was helping him fix up a powder blue Volkswagen. “I remember it had a floorboard on the driver’s side that you could see the road through,” Scheurich Jr. said. “My dad says, ‘Hey, if you help me with this project, I’ll go get you that cap gun you’ve been wanting.’ And I was like, ‘Well, this is the best thing ever.’ ” Scheurich’s mother later told him his father was respected by his superiors in the Navy, and planned to have a long career as an officer. In 1967, it was his turn to deploy to Vietnam. “He had a job to do, and he jumped into the airplane and he did that job to the best of his ability,” Scheurich Jr. said. Scheurich Jr. said his father’s absence loomed over his family for years. His mother kept a large portrait in the den, between a ship clock and a ship weather barometer. She maintained hope he would return. When that hadn’t happened by the time he was a college student at Old Dominion University studying computer science, Scheurich Jr. found acceptance while helping his roommate process the loss of his father, also in the Navy. “For the longest time, I really thought he was going to come home. And then I realized when I was in college that ‘Damn, I don’t think my dad’s coming home’,” Scheurich Jr. said. “It was really sad at first, the death of my roommate’s father triggered my thoughts of my father, and we were sitting there, just two young guys crying. “But after that, I felt so much better.” Scheurich Jr. moved forward — he became a defense contractor for Northup Grumman and later worked as an IT director and also as a civilian employee for the Navy. He retired in 2022 and enjoys spending time with his two granddaughters. In 2018, he saw a national news story about the remains of a Vietnam War bombardier-navigator who disappeared during a strike mission being discovered at a crash site in North Vietnam. The name of the man caught him by surprise: Lt. Richard Lannom. “I had a renewed hope,” Scheurich Jr. said. “In college, I’m not going to say I gave up, but I let myself off with the hope and the waiting part, which is really difficult.” He began attending yearly meetings of the DPAA, hoping to learn more about the investigation. He was planning to attend the 2025 national meeting in Omaha and visit family when he got the call from the Navy that his father had been discovered. “I was in absolute shock. I thought that this would never happen in my lifetime,” Scheurich Jr. said. “My son is named after my father for various reasons, but he’s the third. And I was preparing him to pick up the torch when I couldn’t do this anymore, and here we are now — we’re all going to Arlington to lay my dad to rest.” Scheurich Jr. and his family are preparing to bury his father and mother together at Arlington National Cemetery — her dying wish in 2020. “He was a rock star as far as my mother was concerned. He’s a national war hero — those words came out of my mom’s mouth just before she died,” Scheurich Jr. said. “We’re all big patriots, but my dad walked the walk. The rest of us just sit back in awe and go, ‘I wonder what that feels like.’ ” Returning Capt. Scheurich has been an effort coordinated between the DPAA, Norfolk International Airport, the Navy, National Cremation Society, his family and others. Scheurich Jr. is looking forward to the closure this will bring him, his family and the community that has awaited his father’s return for over 50 years. “The Navy never gave up,” Scheurich Jr. said. “The DPAA did their job and they did it really well.” Emma Rose Brown, 757-805-2256, emma.brown@virginiamedia.com
