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Reflections on 59th Anniversary of Your Death

As readers will come to find out as early as June 15, Father’s Day, 2025, one of the endorsers of my investigative memoir about your life and death beautifully said it is “an affecting, haunting, and beautiful testament to the hole a man has left in the universe.” “How true,” I think this morning as I reflect on the 59th anniversary of your death. Whereas your death sucked memories of my childhood into a black hole of nothingness, through my decades of research across two continents, I’ve discovered it left countless others across the world, including family, friends, allies, and former foes, puzzled and wondering what happened on your Air America flight this day in 1965. Perhaps you, I, and many others will achieve a sense of peace when I reveal on Father’s Day 2025 what happened to you 59 years ago today.

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By James b. Wells

JAMES B. WELLS is a retired criminology and criminal justice professor in the School of Justice Studies in the College of Justice, Safety, and Military Science at Eastern Kentucky University, and is the recipient of the 2025 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences John Howard Award, an award given intermittently, upon significant demand, to recognize an individual who has made significant and sustained contributions to the practice of corrections. A former carpenter, soldier, and correctional officer in a super-maximum-security prison and later as a researcher/planner assisting architects in prison design, he has multiple degrees, including an M.S. in Criminal Justice, a Ph.D. in Research, and an MFA in Creative Writing. He’s authored or co-authored over sixty-five books, chapters, articles, and essays, as well as over a hundred and fifty research reports for various local, state, and federal agencies. Recent essays from his research and memoir work appear or are forthcoming in Collateral Journal, About Place Journal, Wild Roof Journal, Military Experience and the Arts, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, Shift, Proud to be: Writing by American Warriors, Trajectory Journal, and From Pen to Page III: More Writings from the Bluegrass Writers Coalition.

His investigative memoir about his father's still CIA-classified death in Vietnam in 1965, titled Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew, will be launched on Father's Day weekend, 2025. Links to publications, presentations, trailers, social media, blog, and other information can be found at https://jamesbwells.com. James enjoys spending much of his leisure time with his spouse on their Lexington, Kentucky farm located on the palisades of the Kentucky River, where he is an organic gardener and beekeeper.

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