MEDIA CONTEST: LAID to REST: WWII Airman’s remains return home after 63 years

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  • News Entry 17
ACC MEDIA CONTEST --  After 63 years of uncertainty, Helen Pennington was finally able to give her late husband a hero's farewell.

First Lt. David Eppright was laid to rest in Warrensburg's Sunset Hill cemetery Tuesday.

It's been more than six decades since Lieutenant Eppright's B-24 departed from Dobodura, Territory of New Guinea, for an armed reconnaissance mission. The plane, carrying a crew of nine, departed on Nov. 4, 1943. Just a few hours into their mission, the crew sighted a convoy of Japanese ships in the Bismarck Sea south of Kavieng. The B-24 continued to follow the convoy and sunk a Japanese light cruiser, but then never returned back to Dobudura. A later search attempt failed to locate the plane.

Ms. Pennington was pregnant with their son just before she learned of her husband's fate. When she found out she was pregnant, medical personnel asked her if she wanted them to notify her husband.

"I told them I wanted to be the first one to tell David," she said.

But Ms. Pennington never got the chance to tell her husband that they were expecting a child.

The men aboard the B-24 were said to be missing in action and in January 1946, the United States War Department declared them all dead.

Ms. Pennington said she never thought she'd have closure, but in April, she was notified that her husband's remains were positively identified.

"It was a shock," she said. "I couldn't believe it."

In 2000, a hunter in Papua New Guinea stumbled upon airplane wreckage. He found bones and dog tags and kept them for two years before turning them into the U.S. embassy. Another two years of search, recovery and investigation of remains and items belonging to many of the crew members would go by before Lieutenant Eppright was identified.

"I just can't believe they searched this long and hard to find those men," Ms. Pennington said.

An old stone marker was placed at the cemetery long ago to memorialize Lieutenant Eppright, but he now as a new headstone and grave by the rest of his family.

"When we were dating, David brought me out here to show me where his father was buried," Ms. Pennington said as she looked at her late husband's grave. "He so dearly loved his father and he wanted me to be a part of that - so we came here. When he was MIA, I put this stone here, and now we can have another stone."

Lieutenant Eppright's memorial service concluded with a 21-gun salute and flag folding by Army members from Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and a three ship F-15 flyover by members of Missouri Air National Guard's 131st Fighter Wing unit located near St. Louis, Mo.

"It was such a beautiful ceremony," Ms. Pennington said.