Korean War POW and the 72-year journey home to Dallas

DALLAS — Early Monday morning, a Dallas-area household gathered at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to welcome a misplaced brother and uncle home. 

On Friday morning, simply 4 days later, they get their likelihood to say a remaining and long-awaited goodbye.

“It’s a very emotional day,” Shelia Kirven mentioned as she waited with different members of her prolonged household outdoors Gate D27. 

American Airlines and airport safety, as they do for dozens of those emotional homecomings annually, allowed the household to await the arrival of AA115 from Honolulu on the tarmac as the airplane rolled to a cease.

“A long time coming,” Kirven might be heard saying as she stood subsequent to her cousin, Erma Flemmings, and their uncle, Ulysses Cherry.

They had been ready for a thriller — and a household story — to lastly come home.

His title was R.B. Cherry. He was quantity 15 out of 16 brothers and sisters from Dallas household. But, he wished to see the world and volunteered to be part of the Army.

“Our dad told us we had an uncle that went off the war and never came home,” Kirven mentioned of the story she was informed as a younger lady.

R.B. Cherry was simply 17 when he satisfied his mother to signal for him in order that he might, underage, be part of the Army. His quick project was the Korean War.

His household by no means noticed him once more.

“I just always knew that he was missing in action and that was really all the information that I had,” Kirven mentioned of her uncle.

“It just brings back old memories,” Ulysses Cherry mentioned. He was the youngest of the 16 brothers and sisters. And now, at 89, he’s the final surviving sibling.

“A difficult day, yeah,” he mentioned of the arrival of that American Airlines flight that landed carrying his brother’s stays. “It brought back old memories.”

Because for 70 years, he by no means knew what occurred to his huge brother. But in the final decade, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency extra intently checked out stays repatriated to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. 

Remains designated solely as “X-13460.”

In 2018, X-13460 and 13 different unknowns had been disinterred following suggestion from researchers with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. It was decided that a few of the stays, together with X-13460, initially got here from the cemetery at POW Camp 5 close to Anju, North Korea.

And by 2020, burial data, witness accounts, and mitochondrial DNA comparability lastly proved that R.B. Cherry, a 19-year-old child from Texas, died in that prisoner-of-war camp in 1950. Military data recommend he suffered at the arms of his captors and ultimately succumbed to pneumonia.

“You can just relive the thing yourself inside of you knowing oh my God, he actually went through something as horrific as that,” mentioned his niece, Erma Flemmings. “And that’s really painful to even consider and think about.”

“A lot of pain a lot of heartache for my uncle,” Shelia Kirven mentioned of her lone surviving uncle Ulysses Cherry. “But I’m glad that he’s still here to be able to know that his brother is finally coming home.”

In the nook of her Duncanville home, Shelia Kirven retains a painted cupboard door on the hearth fireside. It says “every family has a story… welcome to ours.” 

They wished to share their 72-year-old story as a result of from the Korean War alone, greater than 7,500 households are nonetheless ready for this identical tough reply on this identical tough sort of day.

“Because it’s still family,” Kirven mentioned explaining why she will get emotional when she talks about an uncle who died even earlier than she was born.

“Whether I knew him or not, he was family that was my dad’s brother,” Kirven mentioned. “And to not know what happens to your family is kind of hard.”

“Yes. And he’s a part of our hearts,” her first cousin, Erma Flemmings, added.

“It’s hard at times you know,” Ulysses Cherry mentioned of the reminiscences that got here flooding again when the brother, solely two years his senior, was lastly discovered.

“It’s just… I don’t know… I don’t know,” he mentioned as he looked for phrases too tough to discover.

So, in these moments the place airplane passengers look out their home windows and see a flag-draped casket respectfully unloaded from the cargo maintain and delivered by an honor guard to a ready hearse, yet one more household needs you to perceive they battle with a mixture of disappointment, reduction and generally pleasure.

“When the plane came in and landed,” Erma Flemmings mentioned, “it was just beautiful and my heart was just racing and so happy inside but yet, tears of joy you know that he made it home.”

R.B. Cherry, a son of Dallas and a member of Company G, 2nd Battalion, twenty fourth Infantry Regiment, twenty fifth Infantry Division, shall be buried with full army honors Friday morning at DFW National Cemetery.