Theresa Zagore, left, and Marie Alexander, hold a portrait of their uncle, Staff Sgt. William Lowery. Mrs. Zagore received a call on her cell phone in March 2001 asking if she was related to William Lowery. "Honestly, I was speechless for about four seconds."

By Ryan Haggerty
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette For William Lowery's family, the uncertainty was the hardest part.

One of seven siblings raised in the Fayette County mining town of Republic, northwest of Uniontown, Mr. Lowery went off to fight in World War II and never came home.

His family knew that his B-24 bomber had disappeared somewhere near the coast of what is now Papua New Guinea on April 16, 1944 -- 62 years ago today -- when he was 33. They knew that the plane's wreckage and the bodies of its 11 crew members could not be located. And they knew that the Army had declared the men dead in February 1946.

But they could never be sure of exactly what had happened to Staff Sgt. William Lowery.

"I'd watch old war movies and I'd just sit there wondering what happened to my uncle," said Jerome Lowery, 63, of Uniontown, whose father, Albert, was William's younger brother. "We used to talk about him all the time."

Click photo for larger image.
Staff Sgt. William Lowery's B-24 bomber disappeared near the coast of what is now Papua New Guinea 62 years ago today. The remains of Mr. Lowery and his crew were found in 2001 and will be laid to rest with full military honors Friday in Arlington National Cemetery. Click photo for larger image.

Now, more than half a century after Mr. Lowery's plane crashed into the jungles of PapuaNew Guinea, his family will be able to give him a proper burial.

The remains of Mr. Lowery and his crew, discovered in 2001 and identified over the past five years by a military agency dedicated to locating soldiers who did not return from America's conflicts, will be laid to rest with full military honors Friday in Arlington National Cemetery.

And even though all of Mr. Lowery's siblings are dead, this unexpected chapter of his story is sending yet another wave of emotion over his surviving relatives.

"I was totally floored," Jerome Lowery said, recalling his reaction when he learned that his uncle had been found. "I just couldn't believe it. The whole thing is phenomenal."

For the nieces, nephews and other extended family members who will gather in Arlington to celebrate Mr. Lowery's life, Uncle Willie is a man they know mostly through family stories and photographs.

"He was very easygoing, and he got along with everybody," said Marie P. Alexander, who never met her uncle but learned about his life from her mother, Florence Phillips, William's older sister.

"My mom always talked about him being very smart," said Ms. Alexander, who grew up in Republic and now lives in Streamwood, Ill. "I also know he liked to joke a lot. That's how his name would come up. Something funny would happen, and someone would say, 'I wish Willie was here.' "

Born in 1911, Mr. Lowery was the fourth child of Frank and Angelina Lowery, Italian immigrants who settled in Republic, where Frank worked in the coal mines and built the family home in 1929.

The shortest student in his class at the beginning of his sophomore year of high school, Mr. Lowery shot through a growth spurt and finished the year taller than all of his classmates. That period of physical growth soon paralleled his increasing personal and family responsibilities.

Mr. Lowery's mother was bedridden for much of her life and died in 1941. As her illness worsened, Ms. Alexander said, Mr. Lowery stepped up to help.

"He felt responsible for the well-being of the family, keeping the family together and running smoothly," Ms. Alexander said. "As my grandfather got older, he became more of a father figure."

Mr. Lowery, who never married, hit the road at the height of the Depression, traveling across the country looking for jobs and sending short notes home to assure his family that he was OK. By January 1942, he had enlisted in the Army.

A little more than twoyears later, he was serving as a gunner on a B-24 bomber, flying with more than 200 aircraft April 16, 1944, a day that came to be known as "Black Sunday," in a massive bombing campaign against a Japanese air base in what was then Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea.

After destroying the Japanese base, the U.S. forces began the return flight to Nadzab, New Guinea, only to encounter severe weather that eventually brought down 30 planes, including Mr. Lowery's.

Airborne searches failed to turn up any trace of Mr. Lowery's bomber, and the military declared the plane's crew missing and then dead, concluding that the plane had crashed into the sea based on its last known location.

The Lowery family took the news hard.

"That was very traumatic," said Florence M. Gilchrist, 74, of North Huntingdon, who was 10 when her Uncle Willie left for war. "I can remember my father being very upset, even though he wasn't that type of person."

Mr. Lowery's brothers and sisters struggled to balance the hope that he still was alive with the likelihood that he had been killed, Mrs. Gilchrist said.

"For a while, there was hope that he would be found. But after a while, they realized that it wasn't meant to be."

Still, Mr. Lowery's sister Florence and brother Columbus refused to believe that their brother was dead, Ms. Alexander said.

"They said that his plane went down somewhere and that he had amnesia," Ms. Alexander said. "That was their theory. It was easier for them to understand."

Deep in the jungle, the crash site was overgrown by vegetation and remained unreported until March 2001, when hikers discovered two sets of dog tags and alerted the U.S. Embassy in Papua New Guinea.

The information was passed on to the Army's Central Identification Laboratory, a branch of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which tracks down missing U.S. military personnel, and a team was dispatched to excavate the crash site.

Theresa A. Zagore, one of his nieces and Ms. Alexander's sister, received a call on her cell phone while driving from work to her home in Hoffman Estates, Ill. The caller asked if she was related to William Lowery.

"Honestly, I was speechless for about four seconds," said Mrs. Zagore, who pulled over to the side of the road because she was so shaken. "It took me a while to comprehend what she was asking. I could feel the goosebumps."

The dog tags of six crew members, including Lowery, had been found, along with human remains, parts of watches, belt buckles, coins, lighters and the plane's tail section, where the aircraft's painted identification number was still visible. DNA testing confirmed that Mr. Lowery and his crew had been located.

The ceremony in Arlington, in which all 11 crew members will be buried in separate caskets next to a 12th casket holding unidentified remains, is bound to be bittersweet.

Mr. Lowery's siblings and father died without knowing where their lost brother and son was, and whether he ever would come home.

"I think they would've all been happy," Mrs. Gilchrist said. "You can't change the fact that he was killed, but now he has his own place. I think my dad would have been really happy about that."

But both Ms. Alexander and Mrs. Zagore, who were initially upset that their mother, Florence, had died before her brother was discovered, have since come to believe that the timing of the discovery was for the best.

"At first, I said, 'God, I wish Mom was here,' " Ms. Alexander said. "But then I said, 'Could she have handled this?' I think, in God's infinite wisdom, it's a blessing that he took her first. Now they're together, the brother and sister who were so close in life."