A 104-year-old woman in Massachusetts has received her brother’s military identification tags 83 years after he died in a plane crash during World War II. Dorothy Stewart, who was 21 when her brother Bernard Parnell died in 1943, was reunited with his dog tags at a ceremony held at a YMCA last month.According to CBS Boston, the identification tags were found among old military records at Beverly Veterans’ Services. Officials did not know how they had reached the office, but spent several years trying to locate Parnell’s surviving family members. Their search eventually led them to Stewart, who was still living in Beverly.For Stewart, the discovery brought back memories of her brother, whose body was never recovered after the aircraft crashed off the Florida coast. Speaking to CBS Boston, she recalled his appearance and popularity when he was young. “First off he was handsome. The girls used to chase him all of the time,” she said.The reunion became possible through the efforts of Ken McKay, assistant director of Veterans’ Services in Beverly. He had been examining old records when he discovered the tags. A document submitted more than five decades earlier eventually helped him identify Stewart and arrange their return.
How Bernard Parnell died
Bernard Parnell joined the US Navy following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He subsequently travelled to Florida, where he was training to serve as a radioman aboard an aircraft.His life ended in 1943 when the aircraft developed engine trouble and crashed into the sea off Florida. Stewart remembered what she had been told about the incident, including her brother’s actions before the crash. “It had engine trouble and it crashed off the coast of Florida,” she said.According to Stewart, Parnell gave a life jacket to the aircraft’s pilot, Lieutenant James Digh. The pilot survived the crash, but Parnell did not. “The pilot was the only survivor. My brother’s body was never found,” Stewart said.With his remains never recovered, the family had no opportunity to bring him home. His military identification tags were also missing for decades, until their discovery among the records maintained by Beverly Veterans’ Services.
Discovering the missing tags
The search began when McKay was going through a collection of historical documents stored in a tote at the veterans’ services office. Some of the records dated back to the Spanish-American War.Among the documents were several military identification tags belonging to former service members. Parnell’s tags were part of that collection. “This is the fourth or fifth maybe dog tag that we’ve pulled out of these files,” McKay told CBS Boston.McKay could not establish how the tags had originally reached the office. Nevertheless, he began looking for relatives who might still be alive.For approximately four to five years, the tags remained hanging on a frame in his office while he continued his research. According to People magazine, McKay would investigate available records, put the search aside when he reached a dead end and return to it later.As more historical documents became available digitally, he was able to make progress. One record proved particularly useful- an application for a headstone for Bernard Parnell, submitted in 1972. The person who had filed that application was Dorothy Stewart.
How McKay found Stewart
Finding Stewart’s name was an important development, but McKay initially doubted whether she would still be alive. Given the number of years that had passed since the headstone application, he began by searching for her obituary. “Due to her age, I initially just searched for an obituary,” he said.Instead, McKay came across a news article about Stewart’s achievements in indoor rowing. She had won five consecutive world championships while competing in an age category she described as 95 plus.The rowing article gave McKay a possible way to contact her. He approached the YMCA, explained his position and told staff why he wanted to reach Stewart. “With that, I called the YMCA, and explained who I am. They thought I was a scammer at first,” McKay recalled.The YMCA eventually helped establish contact, allowing McKay to arrange the return of the identification tags.
An emotional reunion after 83 years
On September 29, Stewart attended a ceremony at the YMCA, where her brother’s dog tags were formally returned to her. The Beverly Veterans’ Council had placed the tags in a frame before presenting them.Receiving the tags brought an emotional response from Stewart, who had lived for more than eight decades without her brother. “I broke down and cried. I just held it after I kissed it. Who would have dreamed after all of this time?” she said.
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