EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- After 33 years, Lester and Margaret Padgett finally will bury the remains of their son, an Army helicopter pilot who died with six others when their chopper went down in Vietnam.

       The parents of the former Washington, Ind., man are awaiting a burial service Friday for the entire crew at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.

       Only partial remains of David E. Padgett and two other crew members have been found. The remains are to be buried with military honors in a single coffin; a single gravestone will bear the names of all seven crew members.

       Each family will receive a flag.

       On Thursday, a wake is scheduled for the crew at an Arlington funeral home.

       The burial follows a painstaking investigation to determine the fate of the crew, find the remains and identify them.

       Through it all, Padgett's parents, now living in Naples, Fla., have had one very large visible reminder of their son: the twin bridges of U.S. 41 over the Ohio River, linking Evansville with Henderson, Ky.

       Padgett worked on the southbound span as a young union laborer before the bridge's 1969 opening. The bridge's formal name is the Bi-State Vietnam Gold Star Memorial Bridge.

       "He said, 'Whenever you go across this bridge, you can think about me because I helped build it,' " Margaret Padgett told the Evansville Courier & Press for a story published Monday.

       Padgett, 25, was a first lieutenant in a unit known as the Black Cats.

       He was the mission's commander when his UH-1H helicopter disappeared Feb. 6, 1969, with six other officers and soldiers aboard in fog and rain.

       Padgett was listed as missing in action for nearly 11 years before the government changed his status to presumed dead in 1979.

       Army officials notified the Padgetts on Dec. 1, 2000, that they had identified their son through the recovery of the gold from a false tooth.

       The crash site was too charred to recover other identifiable remains.

       "When they came here that night, I was disappointed that they didn't find human remains," she said.

       Margaret Padgett held onto the tiny scrap of gold but later returned it for burial.

       Two of the other families contested the findings, delaying the burial nearly two years.

       Meanwhile, Padgett's family had its own memorial service on the anniversary of his last mission, Feb. 6, 2001, in Naples.