Decades after her Marine husband died 4,600 miles away, PSL woman learns what happened

Linda Merklinger was 22 in 1972 when her husband of three years, Gerald Merklinger, died in a helicopter crash about 4,600 miles away in Norway.

Gerald Merklinger, a Martin County High School graduate, was a 25-year-old first lieutenant in the U.S. Marines. Linda said she was told at the time the crash came during a “special mission.”

A Department of the Navy document she provided stated he died Sept. 23, 1972, on Grytoya Island, which is 42 square miles. He was the pilot.

Over the next several decades, their daughter, Melissa Merklinger, grew up; Linda remarried (she’s now Linda Patterson) and had a son. But the circumstances of what happened to Gerald Merklinger remained a mystery.

“Records were sealed. There was no information. Nothing,” she said. “You’re thinking was it pilot error … You don't know.”

NATO mission

That started to change last year, after texts and phone calls to family members from a woman in California, Abby Boretto, who had learned her father, 1st Lt. Henry Pilger, co-piloted that helicopter. Pilger, Gerald Merklinger and three others died in the crash.

“That's how we found out they were on mission 'Strong Express,' and it was a NATO mission,” Patterson said. “It wasn't so secret after 50 years.”

NATO −The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. Its members agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties.

According to a New York Times article on the day of the crash, the massive NATO “Strong Express” exercise involved in excess of 65,000 men, about 700 aircraft and 350 ships from 12 NATO nations.

It was to demonstrate in part how quickly NATO members could come to the defense of Norway in the event northern Norway was captured by an enemy, according to Associated Press archival video.

Patterson, her daughter and her daughter’s wife, Rhonda Morgan, traveled in September to Norway, connecting with Boretto and others.

Patterson and her family flew in a helicopter to the rocky crash site, which she said is on the side of a mountain and devoid of vegetation.

“You finally now have a visual of this is where it happened. No more guessing. No more wondering,” Patterson said. “No more thinking, ‘God only knows what happened.’ Now, you know what happened. And thank God, I got to see it in my lifetime.”

While they couldn’t land because of the wind, they hovered over the spot and Patterson got a good sense of the area.

Melissa Merklinger, 53, said the weather was challenging, but a window of opportunity opened.

“It was absolutely beautiful. There were no clouds,” Melissa Merklinger, of Orlando, said. “It was a little windy, but it was spectacular. It was extremely peaceful.”

Melissa Merklinger, who also attended Martin County High School, said she wore one of her father’s flight jackets during the visit to Norway.

“Right before the trip, my mom presented me with that jacket, so I had no idea it existed,” Melissa Merklinger said.

Gerald Merklinger is buried at Fernhill Memorial Gardens & Mausoleum on South Kanner Highway in Stuart. Next to him are his mother and father, who died in 2010 and 1993, respectively. The cemetery is across the street from First United Methodist Church of Stuart where Linda and Gerald were married.

Patterson said over the years she tried to get information from the military.

“After a while, you're kind of like, OK, you're done,” Patterson said. “You're not getting anything.”

Patterson said Boretto’s efforts to connect with Patterson’s family proved critical to learning more, but Boretto’s journey to find out about her dad, Pilger, is perhaps even more extraordinary.

‘We just carried on’

Boretto was 15 months old when her father, a 1970 U.S. Naval Academy graduate, died at 24.

“I just didn't know all that much about him,” Boretto, 52, said in a recent interview. “It wasn't necessarily a negative, and it was just a sign of the times back in the 70s.”

Her mother remarried when Boretto was 8 years old, and much of what she knew about Pilger came when people remarked she looked like him or shared a mannerism.

Boretto, of Poway, California, said her father had given her mother a sweetheart ring, similar to his Naval Academy ring. Boretto’s mother, in turn, gave that ring to Boretto when she was a teen, and she wore it daily because it was her only connection to her father.

When Boretto was about 19, she was swimming in Hawaii and the ring came off.

“I said out loud to my friends who were on the beach helping me ... I'm totally devastated,” Boretto said. “But the ring will come back to me.”

‘He knew to start with an embassy’

A different ring, her father’s actual 1970 U.S. Naval Academy ring, did find her.

The package arrived several months after a Norwegian man out hunting found it in 1993 — more than 20 years after the helicopter crash — on Grytoya Island.

“He knew to get this ring back to the family,” Boretto said. “He knew to start with an embassy ... and it carried on through there. It took maybe four or five months to get to me.”

Boretto had the ring for decades more, placing it with mementos. During the pandemic, in October 2020, she began reflecting on her life.

“I’m 49 years old, and I'm turning 50 in June 2021,” she said.

She turned to the ring and the package and the letter included from the hunter in Norway, Hans Krogstad.

“I said I can't believe we never thanked this person,” she said.

She tried to connect with Krogstad, but wasn’t immediately successful.

Not too long after Boretto’s 50th birthday, a Facebook message arrived from a journalist in Norway, asking her specific questions about whether her father died in Norway and about a ring. She enthusiastically responded.

“Then it occurs to me, how does he know this?” Boretto said. “So I asked, How do you know this? And he said, I just heard this fantastic story, from Hans himself.”

She learned that Krogstad wondered whether the ring made it back to the family and began his own investigation. Krogstad’s son is friends with the Norwegian journalist.

Boretto decided she and her husband wanted to go to the crash site, meet Krogstad and film a documentary on the 50th anniversary of the crash, Sept. 23, 2022, which they did.

Boretto and her husband began a “deep dive” into the crash after getting a copy of the crash report from the Norwegian journalist.

Efforts to research the others who died in the crash brought Boretto to Gerald Merklinger’s sister, of Stuart, and Patterson’s daughter.

Boretto said she told Melissa Merklinger they planned to return to Norway in September 2023 to premier the documentary and they would love to have her along.

Melissa Merklinger’s wife and her mother also went on the trip.

“I think Melissa has been one of my greatest treasures in this, finding the next-of-kin has been a tremendous honor for me,” Boretto said. “It's only because of the magical ring.”

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Will Greenlee is a breaking news reporter for TCPalm. Follow Will on X @OffTheBeatTweet or reach him by phone at 772-267-7926. E-mail him at will.greenlee@tcpalm.com.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Mystery of USMC pilot's death in 1972 solved for Port St. Lucie widow