[2Wycked]

Another one of our boys has been returned home:

Quote:

The remains of a Korean War veteran were returned to his hometown of Waltham Thursday, 65 years after he was declared missing in action.

Army Sergeant Robert C. Dakin was 22 when he went missing after a battle near the Chosin Reservoir on Dec. 12, 1950. He was assigned to Company L, 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, according to a statement from the US Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

His status was later changed to deceased when no information could be found about his loss.

Dakin’s remains were escorted from Logan International Airport by State and Waltham police to the Joyce Funeral Home Thursday afternoon. Family and friends will honor him throughout the weekend with a wake on Friday and a funeral on Saturday.

The funeral will include a horse-drawn procession with local police and fire officials, veterans, bagpipers, and drummers.

Melinda Fonvielle, 61, of Fleming Island, Fla., said that when the US Army called to tell her they had identified her uncle’s remains, she “busted out crying.”

She said she had grown up wondering why her grandmother was always so sad. Now, she said, her grandmother would be overjoyed to have closure to her son’s disappearance.

“We’ve known about this all our lives,” she said. “It kind of put a wet blanket on the family, and it was always there.”

Fonvielle received the news about her uncle about a month ago, and said it has given her family a lot of the answers they needed.

“It was surprising to us that it hit us like it did,” she said. “It was almost like a spiritual thing.”

Dakin was born in Waltham on June 4, 1928, and lived there until he enlisted in the military. He was one of five siblings and was his parents’ only son, according to an obituary published by the Joyce Funeral Home.

Fonvielle’s mother, Barbara Rewis, is Dakin’s only sister who is still alive. Rewis also lives in Fleming Island but was too sick to travel to Massachusetts for the funeral.

Dakin’s remains were one of at least 600 bodies returned to the United States by the North Korean government between 1990 and 1994. The remains were returned in a total of 208 boxes, and they are still being identified.

Dakin was identified through circumstantial evidence and two forms of DNA analysis, the Defense Department said.

More than 7,800 American veterans from the Korean War are still unaccounted for.