Vietnam War POW, FedEx pilot’s career honored
Growing up in Memphis, Lt. Col. Cecil Brunson only wanted to fly for FedEx — a dream he realized in 1986 and the 25 years to follow.
But well before delivering goods for the Memphis-based logistics giant, Brunson already had an admirable career in the books. He logged 160 combat missions during the Vietnam War before being captured and enduring more than five months as a prisoner of war.
Brunson’s life in the air — and the guile he showed in the Vietnam War — will be honored Saturday at the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame’s annual enshrinement gala in Murfreesboro. The Class of 2018 inductee said he was shocked when he received the news earlier this year.
“When they notified me, I went, ‘Me?’” Brunson, 70, said at his Collierville home on Wednesday, mentioning FedEx founder Fred Smith and longtime FedEx pilot and military veteran Wil Wilhoite among the past inductees he looks up to.
Brunson is a strong advocate for building a career in aviation, saying it’s a field filled with special people and brimming with excitement. Accumulating the type of career Brunson did over his decades in the skies, though, would not be an easy task.
Brunson always intended on becoming a pilot, although he didn’t start with FedEx right away. A 1970 graduate of the University of Memphis, Brunson received his commission in the U.S. Air Force through the university’s ROTC program.
Life started moving fast. Brunson got married about a month after he received his diploma — he met his wife, Jean, on a blind date a few years before. During their honeymoon, the Air Force called up Brunson for active duty, placing him in navigator training at a base in California. Daily
About a year later, Brunson was assigned in February 1972 for a combat tour in southeast Asia as the Vietnam War continued.
Brunson settled into the role of weapons system officer in the F-4 Phantom jet fighter, meaning he primarily handled toss bombing operations in combat. In his first eight months on tour, Brunson logged more than 380 hours of combat time. Then he got hit. Brunson’s aircraft was shot down on Oct. 12, 1972, during a mission about 15 miles northeast of Hanoi, hit by the missile of a jet fighter while engaged with two other aircraft.
“I spent about three hours on the ground before I was picked up,” he said.
Prisoner of war
The North Vietnamese took Brunson into a notorious camp known to Americans as the “Hanoi Hilton.” They split his time between that camp and “The Zoo” in Cu Loc.
“I endured quite a few beatings up there during interrogations,” he said. “There were a lot of threats that they were going to kill me.”
The small concrete cells holding Brunson and others typically featured an iron door, a window with iron bars and a three-gallon can to be used as a bathroom, he said. Boards on top of concrete blocks were their beds.
One avenue for POWs to keep their spirits up was music, Brunson said. He created a makeshift guitar, and his cellmate managed to make a keyboard.
“It was kind of neat to figure out the different chords, and we taught each other a lot of stuff about music, which was kind of fun,” he said.
POWs also wrote songs. Brunson helped pen a song about the day his aircraft went down: “The Ballad of Sparrow 3.” It’s sung to the tune of “Last Kiss,” a song released in 1961 and later covered by Pearl Jam and many other artists.
“Oh where, Oh where can my wingman be / Was he clearing my six for me / I sit in Hanoi a lonely P.O.W. / I wonder where my wingman is now,” goes the chorus.
Back in Memphis, Jean remained hopeful he would return. A major told her his plane had been shot down but that Brunson must have survived the landing because his beeper signal was heard afterward.
“That’s all I needed — he was out,” she said. “I was young, and I just figured he would be OK.”
Coming home
Jean turned out to be right. The Paris Peace Accords that took the U.S. out of the Vietnam War was signed in January 1973, and Brunson was able to return home.
“We were hesitant to be joyful until we were out of airspace,” he said of the flight out of North Vietnamese territory. “When the captain came on the intercom and said we just exited Vietnamese airspace, there was a lot of shouting going on.”
Among one of the last POW groups to be flown back to the U.S., Brunson was put in the hospital for a few days to undergo various physical and psychological exams, plus a heavy amount of debriefing.
Brunson eventually went into pilot training and back into the F-4 Phantom. He served another five years, assigned at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, before resigning in 1980.
Flying FedEx
Brunson, along with Jean and their children Kevin and Angela, returned to Memphis following his resignation.
He joined the Tennessee Air National Guard, and while serving there was hired by FedEx Express, realizing a dream. The company’s world hub has made Memphis International Airport one of the world’s busiest cargo airports.
The majority of FedEx’s pilots during Brunson’s time there were former or active military members, he said. Camaraderie wasn’t hard to come by among the pilots, and long flights under dark skies provided ample time to swap war stories.
“There were multi-day trips, especially overseas, and I did a lot of international flying all over Europe, Asia, South America — just everywhere,” he said.
Flights often ended up in Hong Kong, where a return trip to Memphis would begin at 7 p.m. there and end at 9:30 p.m. Memphis time the next day.
“You stay busy,” Brunson said of the extended trips. “You’re not sitting up there doing nothing. Crews have about four hours each ... you’re constantly making radio calls, checking positions and fuel and all that. It’s like driving.”
Brunson welcomed the new mission, much different from his Air Force days.
“I was no longer carrying bombs — I was carrying goods and commerce, and people weren’t shooting at me anymore,” he said.
Brunson retired from FedEx in 2010, but the company hasn’t forgotten his service. He said after receiving notice of his induction into the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame, FedEx offered to fly him out to the ceremony.
He ultimately declined though, as he already had plans in place to meet family in Lebanon. Brunson credited his family with being an important pillar throughout his life, a life that has spanned the globe, encountered numerous combat situations, endured months in a POW camp and delivered commerce that drives the world’s economy.
“These are all amazing guys,” Brunson said of past Hall of Fame inductees. “With the stories they can tell, it’s just an honor to be put among them.”
Max Garland covers FedEx, logistics and health care for The Commercial Appeal. Reach him at max.garland@commercialappeal.com or 901-529-2651 and on Twitter @MaxGarlandTypes.