This is a neat story: The remains of a soldier killed at Pearl Harbor are finally going home after having been unidentifiable for 68 years. The family was able to help experts positively identify the body by providing a DNA sample for comparison . . . from the letters he had mailed home to his mother.
His niece, Peggy, explains:
I called my cousin to see if she had any hair or garments or anything that would have his DNA on [it]. She thought, oh my goodness, I’ve got about 70 letters that Gerry sent home to our grandmother, and his DNA would be on the envelopes that he licked himself. That was a positive. . . .
[I]t’s almost like predestined serendipity because why did our grandmother, instead of slitting across the top, she slit down the left vertical edge, and so the flap was never opened. The seal was intact, and the scientist became very animated when he said that there was no contamination.
Gerry Lehman’s remains will receive a military escort back home to Michigan in June, and Peggy isn’t shy about who deserves the credit:
We’ll have a funeral Mass because we know who to thank, and this is certainly God’s dream. In fact, I wanted to honor my mother by writing about her kid brother, but God had a much grander dream than mine, and that was to fulfill my mother’s fondest wish, which was to get her baby brother back.
That this could really happen is almost unimaginable in our age of e-mail. Makes me want to write a letter today.
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