Mother laments her son's death
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"We knew then that he was mentally ill. My husband had been in the service, and he knew that if we returned Richard to the Army, he would never receive treatment and would probably be put on a hard work detail in some prison," Mrs. Bunch said.
"So we called civilian hospitals, Veterans Administration hospitals, and the Patterson Air Force Base hospital. None of them wanted him. We finally contacted a detective who said he would find a hospital, but the day before he was supposed to come for Richard, all the hospitals we had called got scared and called the Army. The police came to get Richard that day."
Bunch was in several prisons on hard-work details, from May 23 until October 11—nearly five months without a trial. During that time, all of Mrs. Bunch's letters to her son were returned, and she never received a letter from him.
"We called the director of Fort Meade and asked why we hadn't heard from our son," she said.
The director of the stockade asked her if she had ever considered writing.
16 KANSAN Apr. 23 1969
"A few days later we called again, and the director told me my son wasn't there. I asked him where he was, and he said he didn't know. Then I asked him if Richard would ever be returned to us, and he said 'no.'"
She said she didn't know until her son was killed, that he was at the Presidio Stockade in San Francisco.
"The Army didn't tell us, and if Richard tried to contact us, we didn't know about it. Our letters were still being returned."
She said she had been told that her son asked to see a psychiatrist two weeks before he was killed. His request was refused.
(The National Committee for the 27 maintains that Army
AURH officers are announced
The Association of Residence Halls elected new officers last week, said Butch Lockard, Raytown, Mo., junior and present AURH chairman.
The new officers, to take their positions May 1, are: chairman, Keith Jorgensen, Mission sophomore; first vice chairman, Marilyn Rule, Ottawa junior; second vice chairman, Gordon Jones, Pittsburg junior; secretary, Mary Ward, Leawood freshman, and treasurer, Jim Hays, Wichita junior.
psychiatrists had at one time declared him a "manic depressive," but Bunch had received no treatment except hard-work detail in the overcrowded Presidio.)
"I don't know what happened to him. Before he joined he was just a normal kid. He joined because his best friend went in, and the recruiting officer said he could finish high school and go on to higher education while in the Army, and after he got out, the Army would help him go to college. He always wanted to
make a study of the great religions," she said.
"We discussed the possibility of death before he went in, and he told me mory people are killed in automobile wrecks than in the Army. That's what the recruiting officer told him."
Near midnight October 11, someone knocked at Mrs. Bunch's door. She got out of bed, opened the door and called back an Army officer who was walking away. Her husband came into the living room and looked at the officer.
"I know why you're here," her husband said.
"Richard had been killed at 10:07 in the morning, and they informed us as midnight. It was only then we were told that he was in the Presidio," Mrs. Bunch said. She was told the death was 'justifiable homicide.'
"I don't accept the conditions under which he was killed, and I'm not able to accept the reason why he was killed by the glorious Army," she said, turning away to look at the long rows of empty auditorium seats.
Class of '70 Don Farrington President Gary Patzkowsky Vice President
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