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(1)
U.S. Identified Baptists' Plane
as Drug Carrier
By IRVIN MOLOTSKY
(2)
For Woman Killed In Peru, Life Was A Mission of Love
Couple Served the Poor Along Amazon
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 22, 2001; Page A22
Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter, Charity, were
killed when their plane was hit in Peru. Her husband, James, and son,
Cory, 6, survived.(1)
ASHINGTON, April 21 — The
airplane carrying American missionaries that was shot down on Friday in
Peru had been mistakenly identified as a carrier of contraband drugs, a
State Department official said tonight.
The official declined to say whether the mistake was made by a United States aircraft, but there was American surveillance plane in the area that was communicating with Peruvian military aircraft.
A missionary and her infant daughter were killed when the plane, a Cessna 185, was downed by fire from a Peruvian Air Force fighter jet.
The United States surveillance flights were suspended pending an investigation of the incident.
"An unarmed U.S. government tracking aircraft was in the area and provided location data for the subsequent intercept mission that was conducted by the Peruvian Air Force," the State Department official said.
The United States and Peru have had a long-standing project in which American spotters inform Peruvian interceptors when they spot what they think are drug runners.
Those killed in the downing of the American plane were Veronica Bowers, 35, a missionary with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and her daughter, Charity, 7 months old.
The Rev. E. C. Haskell, a spokesman for the association, which is based in Morgantown, Pa., said that the missionaries' pilot, Kevin Donaldson, was wounded.
Ms. Bowers's husband, Jim, 37, and their son, Cory, 6, were also on the plane and were not wounded, Mr. Haskell said.
The United States Customs Service flies surveillance planes into what it calls the "source zone" for drugs, but a spokesman, Dennis Murphy, said today that his agency's planes were not involved in tracking the missionaries' plane on Friday. A Customs Service radar plane based in the Caribbean was flying in Colombia on Friday, but it was far north of the path taken by the Cessna 185 and did not observe it, Mr. Murphy said.
The Customs Service has a P-3, a four-engine turboprop, the same kind of plane that the Navy uses to track enemy submarines, based in the Caribbean.
Normal practice for the Customs Service is that once a radar plane locates a suspicious plane in flight, it radios for a Citation, a smaller plane that can fly at low speeds, to observe the target visually.
Both the radar plane and the observation plane carry a representative from the host country, said Mr. Murphy, who communicates directly with the air force of the country involved.
Recently, he said, the observation plane saw a small plane land on a dirt strip, and saw bales being loaded unto mules; ground forces from the host country arrived in time to intercept the drugs, he said.
The State Department official said tonight: "We are very saddened by this tragic accident and extend our sympathy and condolences to the family, their friends and relatives."
The official said that the downed plane was flying in northern Peru near the Colombia border, flying from Leticia, Colombia, toward Iquitos, Peru. Colombia has long been a major source of cocaine and other drugs reaching the United States, prompting the United States surveillance flights in the region.
"Pending a thorough investigation and review by Peruvian and U.S. officials of how this tragic incident took place, the provision of location data by the U.S. and the conduct of intradiction flights have been suspended," the State Department official said.
The official said: "For a number of years, the United States has provided assistance to Peru in detecting and monitoring suspect aircraft passing through designated airspace in an effort to stem the flow of illegal drugs. This is a United States government program in which a number of U.S. agencies are involved, including the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Drug Enforcement Administration and others.
"Peruvian authorities are responsible for identifying the aircraft and deciding on any action. We are working closely with Peruvian authorities to determine exactly how this tragic incident took place."
Earlier today, before the State Department had issued its statement, at the gathering of Western Hemisphere nations in Quebec, President Bush said: "The United States is certainly upset by the fact that two citizens lost their lives. I will wait to see all the facts before I reach any conclusions about blame."
(2)
Veronica "Roni" Bowers heard the call when she was 12.
"She just told us that 'the Lord has called me to be a missionary,' " recalled her father, John Luttig, who is trying to accept the fact that the Lord has called his daughter again, one last time.
She was extremely bright, his only daughter, "my baby," Luttig said of the 35-year-old woman killed Friday when a Peruvian fighter fired on the small plane carrying her; her husband, James; and their children, Cory, 7, and Charity, an infant who also was killed.
Luttig, who lives in the small Florida town of Pace, just outside Pensacola, said that when Roni Bowers graduated from high school in Poquoson, Va., she was only 16. And she went straight to Piedmont Bible College, in Winston-Salem, N.C.
There she met Jim Bowers. The son of missionaries who lived their life along the Amazon, Jim Bowers himself was drawn to the mighty and powerful river, to work among the poor and illiterate who lived along its twists and turns.
Roni, who would date only boys who were going to be missionaries, married Jim on Nov. 3, 1985. To hear friends and family tell it, the two were a perfect match, both committed to a life of missionary work.
Their desire to share their love led them to adopt Charity last fall. It was on their journey to gain official permission for Charity to remain with them in Peru that their plane was shot down -- the mistaken target of Peruvian officials fighting drug traffickers.
The Bowerses began their life together in college. Their studies were interrupted by Jim's stint in the Army, which included a several-year assignment in Germany. When he was discharged in 1990, he returned to school to get his degree "as a preacher boy," Luttig said in a telephone interview. Roni Bowers received a degree in elementary education and in Bible studies, he said. They graduated in 1993.
Then they went to Muskegon, Mich., where Jim's mother grew up. It is where members of Calvary Church, the couple's church, now are grieving.
"These people were extremely committed to the cause of Christ," said Gloria Rudd, whose husband, the Rev. Bill Rudd, is the pastor of the church.
Gloria Rudd said the young couple arrived with a mind to go into mission work. "They weren't quite sure where," Rudd recalled. "He was constantly drawn back to the Amazon."
He had grown up in Brazil, along the river where his parents, Terry and Wilma Bowers, were missionaries and his late father was a pilot, flying charity missions along the Amazon.
They were accepted by the U.S.-based Association of Baptists for World Evangelism to become missionaries in Peru in 1993 and began to raise the financial support they would need to live there.
Many churches, including Calvary Church, chipped in to help them build a houseboat. "There were people from all over that God just sent to construct it," Rudd recalled. "We ran into a man who had been a retired naval architect, who designed the boat so it would be the most efficient in traveling, using gas. You don't hear of many people who do that."
The boat, which floats on pontoons and cost about half a million dollars, was completed about five years ago, and the Bowerses moved in. They took their mission up and down the Amazon, visiting 50 to 100 villages where Jim would preach and Roni would teach. He was pastor in churches with tin roofs in town and in churches with thatched roofs in the jungle villages. She taught the Bible and literacy, in Spanish.
"She did a lot with the women," Rudd said. "She was an incredible woman. Not many people will go and live with the not so lovely, as she did."
She looked a little bit Peruvian, with her big brown eyes and olive skin. That's on account of her Sioux blood, which she got from her mother.
"She is the most beautiful young lady in the world," Luttig said.
The Bowerses adopted Cory in 1994 and last fall adopted Charity, who was born Sept. 14.
"She struggled a lot with the pain of infertility," Rudd said, adding that Roni Bowers wrote about her struggle, which she said "really revealed her heart."
Luttig and his wife accompanied the family as they took Charity home with them to Peru at the end of December. They celebrated the New Year on the houseboat.
"We went up and down the Amazon with them," Luttig said.
Now, he is awaiting her return from Peru. A funeral is being planned in Muskegon. And then, Luttig said, he will bury his daughter and granddaughter near him, in Pensacola.