Who I Am My name is Matt Wheeler. I am a Political Science major at New York University. I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1985 and raised in Austin by my mother. I am the son and grandson of great and noble scientists, who lent their expertise to the US Government in order to make the world a safer, better place. My father and grandfather both died, serving their country and well before their time, in tragic accidents. Or so I have been told all my life. Recent events have made me begin to question everything, however, even these basic assumptions. Of course, I know that I am Matt Wheeler, because I can prove it with several forms of local, state and federal ID. But who that man staring back at me from my driver's license actually is, I'm still trying to figure out. For the first 21 years of my life, this is what I believed: My grandfather John Wheeler was a biologist, and a damn good one. He specialized in animal biology as it relates to the ecology, still a relatively new field in post-WWII America. In 1955 my grandfather, then 25, was hired by a company called Termes Laboratories in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he helped to develop vaccines for deadly diseases that were still epidemic in Third-World countries. John Wheeler's work examining the healing properties of honey and bee pollen caught the attention of the scientific community, and he was chosen to work with the US military at the end of 1957. Working in a facility on the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station for the next 9 years, he helped develop vaccines and other medical treatments. In June, 1966, under the auspices of a US-Thai military assistance agreement signed after the Korean War, my grandfather was sent to lend his expertise to Thailand's leading team of vaccine researchers in Bangkok. In June, 1967, while en route to deliver a supply of vaccines to a hospital in the town of Trat, near the Cambodian border, John Wheeler's plane went down in the Gulf of Siam. The plane was never recovered, nor were the bodies of the pilot, my grandfather, or his other 2 project team members. The cause of the plane crash was attributed to "pilot error." A more complete accounting was not given to his 12 year old son or his wife, who merely accepted it as being "God's will." Inspired by his father's bravery, dedication and sacrifice, my father, John Wheeler, Jr., joined the ROTC in high school and went to Texas A&M, where he received a Bachelor's degree in Biology. In 1982, while serving a Master's internship at Termes Laboratories, the same facility where his father had worked in the 50's, John Wheeler, Jr., was also tapped by the US military. He went to work for a newly-commissioned agency designed to help plan and implement the decommissioning of old military bases throughout the world. With the long-term effects of Vietnam-era chemical defoliants now firmly in the public consciousness, one of my father's top priorities was the safe recovery of the thousands of unused barrels of these chemicals still scattered throughout Southeast Asia. While traveling throughout SEA on a tour of military bases in 1987, my father was reported missing and presumed dead after he failed to show up for his meeting at Don Muang Air Force Base in Bangkok. An official investigation revealed no promising leads, and the case was closed later that year. My mother and grandmother agreed that my father had most likely been a victim of Bangkok's "terrible crime problem." I do know that John Wheeler, Jr., received his Bachelor's from Texas A&M, because I stared at his diploma hanging on the wall of our den my whole life. And I am fairly certain that John Wheeler, Sr., raised bees at some point, because my grandmother showed me his old beekeeping equipment in the attic when I was eight. Growing up, I never had reason to doubt the rest of my paternal history, although I always suspected that I was not being told the whole story. Despite not growing up in a military household, technically speaking, I was nonetheless raised with a serviceman's ideals of discipline, respect for authority, and always thinking ahead. I always attributed my mother's and grandmother's hesitance to talk in detail about their husbands' demises to the belief that it was just too painful to talk about, and served no real purpose. "Do" was the operative verb in my young life, not "talk." As I've recently learned, there may have been other reasons for their silence. This website is an attempt to discover what really happened to my father and grandfather. I have only ever known these men through the laudatory, almost mythic anecdotes passed down from the women in my family. I want to learn who these men, these humans, really were. It is my hope that by doing this, I may in turn discover who I really am. As of this writing, however, I'm only just beginning to figure it out…