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Awaiting news of the long-lost

Families hope that technology reunites them with remains from their military men.

By SHEELA RAMAN
Published February 24, 2007

Patricia Scharf's 41-year wait for her husband ended with a bone fragment and a love letter.

Last year, government scientists finally identified the remains of Col. Charles J. Scharf by using DNA to match the bone with the saliva on the seal of love letters he sent his wife during the Vietnam War.

Mrs. Scharf, 72, of northern Virginia, said finding her husband's remains was a great relief. Now she knows he is only 15 minutes away, buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Thousands of others like Scharf have spent much of their lives wondering what happened to loved ones who disappeared in battle zones around the world.

Today, local family members of missing soldiers will meet in Tampa with officials from the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office to discuss the progress of recovery efforts.

The families will contribute DNA samples and get updates on their individual cases. Scientists will explain the arduous process of finding soldiers remains, from talking to villagers in Korea to trudging through jungles in Vietnam to negotiating for information with former Cold War adversaries.

About 88,000 American soldiers remain unaccounted for - more than 78,000 from World War II, 8,000 from Korea, 1,700 from Vietnam and hundreds from the Cold War.

For many of the family members left behind, finding their missing soldier has become a dying wish.

* * *

Emily Meyers already knew her brother was missing in Korea. The crumbled cookies only hammered the reality home.

Pfc. Charles Meyers disappeared on Nov. 2, 1950, somewhere near the Chosin Reservoir, where thousands of soldiers perished. A few weeks later, the Army returned his unread mail, including a batch of cookies Meyers had sent him.

The image of the crumbs and the anguish has stuck with Emily Meyer's daughter, Brenda Canniff.

Canniff, who now lives in Pasco County, has spent the past 60 years seeking slivers of information that might lead to closure. When a History Channel documentary names her uncle's regiment, Canniff takes down all the soldier names and tries to contact them in person.

At age 67, she said her final desire is to find her uncle's remains and bury them next to her grandparents. She now has little hope that he survived.

Finding the remains of lost soldiers is the full-time job of the scientists who take part in excavation trips, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the POW/Missing Personnel Office. The organization has identified hundreds of soldiers from several wars, even reconnaissance pilots shot down during the Cold War.

But progress in finding Korean War veterans has slowed considerably since early 2005, when the U.S. government banned scientists from working in North Korea. Mounting tensions between the countries caused officials to worry about their safety.

The precise efforts of the scientists have always impressed Canniff. She still has faith that they can help fulfill her wish.

"I thank God there are people out there who know we are going through this and are trying to give us some peace of mind," she said.

* * *

Plant City resident William E. Hill was still in the womb when his father William G. Hill went missing during the Korean War. Still, the specter of his father has defined Hill's life ever since.

He looks like his father, once startling his grandmother who thought he was his father returned from the battlefield. He acts like his father, his aunt said. He also chose a military career to be closer to his father, taking an Air Force assignment in Korea to traverse the exact site where his father was last seen.

"It was a weird experience," said Hill, 55, who plans to attend the meeting today. "It made me think I might find him."

His family has submitted DNA, but there has been no news about his case in the past five years, he said.

He hopes to one day bury his father at Arlington.

* * *

James "Jim" White begged to be a part of the Air Force team that performed support missions over Laos during the Vietnam War.

White, like his famous brother Ed White, wanted to be an astronaut, not a fighter. But to be accepted into test pilot school, he needed combat time. The government initially would not let him fight because his brother had died during the Apollo I spacecraft fire. White would not give up and got his wish.

White, tall, with a lean handsome face, had married his high school sweetheart, Sharon Cook. She was waiting for him in Bangkok with their 6-month-old daughter when his plane disappeared in heavy clouds over Laos on Nov. 24, 1969.

Cook stayed in Bangkok for six more months waiting for any sign of him. "If anyone could walk out of the wilderness, he could," Cook said.

She was racked with guilt. Maybe she had been a distraction, she thought. She spent the next six years crusading around the world on behalf of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.

She eventually remarried and lives in the Placido Bayou development in northeast St. Petersburg. A hefty cardboard box filled with her former husband's case file still sits in her guest room.

She heard recently about a Taiwanese businessman who had seen a live Caucasian man working in a mill in Laos. She called the St. Petersburg Times to see if the paper could trace the man's identity. The lead went nowhere.

She still wonders.

"Just finding him would take all this doubt away," she said.

* * *

Alfred Flaherty, 84, knows he's running out of time in the search for his brother, Gerard.

The pair grew up together in Brooklyn during the Depression. Alfred returned from World War II, but Gerard, a radio gunner on a B-52, went missing in Papua New Guinea, where scientists have had considerable success in finding remains.

"The life span in combat for a radio gunner is about two and a half minutes," Flaherty said, who doubts his brother survived the war.

The only one of 10 siblings still alive, Plant City resident Flaherty will donate his DNA sample to scientists at the meeting today. He said God has left him here as the link to his brother.

"He was a prince," he said of his brother. "He deserves a burial."

If you go

Recovery update

The meeting will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Sheraton Suites Tampa Airport Hotel. Anyone who is related to a missing serviceman is welcome to attend. The Defense Department POW/Missing Personnel Office invited more than 1,000 area family members to the event, but only 150 registered.

[Last modified February 24, 2007, 01:23:19]