Published May 10, 2010
Your host Andrew Phelps here. From time to time my WBUR colleagues will share their insights about stories on this blog. In the hubbub over Elena Kagan and everything else in the news, Steve Brown reminds us of the Carver soldier being laid to rest 66 years after his death. Steve has been following the story for almost two months now. Here is his notebook.
Cpl. Richard Loring with his niece, Jean Cole Lowe, in the early 1940s.
Members of the military say they don’t leave their comrades behind on the battlefield. I always wondered if that was just a romantic myth.
It’s a few moments before Cpl. Richard Loring’s funeral here at the United Protestant Parish of Carver. His story captures my imagination. Loring was serving in the Army Air Corps on May 10, 1944, when his B-25 Mitchell crashed in soupy weather on the island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean.
Loring’s funeral today lays to rest any doubt about the military’s loyalty to the fallen. Once the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command had positive evidence the crew’s remains were on Mount Cagna, they sprang into action to bring the missing Americans home.
Cpl. Richard Loring is laid to rest Monday in Carver. (Steve Brown/WBUR)
There has been an odd disconnect from this story with all involved. No one in the church today ever met Richard Loring. His relatives, grand nieces and nephews were all born after he died. Their only memory is a photograph, and the knowledge he was their mother’s favorite uncle. The town of Carver, where Loring grew up, is also at a loss about how to react. Loring’s family moved away a long time ago.
Nevertheless, Loring will receive a fitting funeral, with full military honors. Gov. Deval Patrick will be among those in attendance, and three F-15 fighter jets will fly over the service.
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