Parents Give Up Search For Long-Missing Son Seattle, Aug. 15 A sorrowing Tennessee couple, prepared today to return home after a futile 3,000-mile search of the Mountain wilds for a missing flier son. The flier, long since given up for dead by the Navy, is Ensign Gaston Eugene Mayes, 23. He and Lieut. Benjamin O. Vreeland of Princeton, N. J., vanished last March 11 on a flight over the Cascades in a light plane. But the O. C. Mayes didn't give up hope. With another son, Bertrand, 21, and a daughter, Bernice. 16, Mr. and Mrs. Mayes conducted :a tireless three-week search. They drove slowly along almost any mountain road they could find, climbing vantage points to scan wooded Cascade slopes with binoculars. "There isn't anything I wouldn't do to find him" Mayes said, adding that a $1,000 reward he offered for the recovery of his son's body still stands. The Mayes, weary and disappointed, said they must now return to Clinton, Tenn. Mrs. Mayes is a school teacher there, and her husband is assistant superintendent of a coal-mining company. Source: The News, Frederick, Maryland, August 6,1949