Pfc. Bryan Myers Jr. died fighting in the early months of the Korean War, and his remains had been a mystery until a few weeks ago.
More than 73 years after his death, Myers’ skeletal remains were identified with the help of DNA from a brother. He will be buried Wednesday in Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood after a service at the Fred C. Dames Funeral Home in .
His remains were flown into O’Hare International Airport on Thursday, and it was a moving experience for the family members who were there. “I did pretty good,” Myers’ sister, Barbara Lee Cerney of , said of her ability to control her emotions at the airport. “But when that plane came in and that casket came out wrapped in the American flag, I knew who it was, and I lost it.
We were a close family.” They grew up on a farm near Cobden, a small town in southern Illinois. Myers was the oldest of five children.
He enlisted in the Army in 1948 at the age of 19. “He was up to here with farm work. He hated it,” Lee Cerney said.
“He wanted to get off the farm, and he loved the service.” Lee Cerney was 17 when her brother enlisted. Lee Cerney and other family members had never expected to see her brother’s remains again after he lost his life in a war in which the bodies of dead soldiers often could not be returned home.
“The fighting was so fierce,” Lee Cerney said. “They just buried them there. If they did, they put up a big tarp, and they put them in a big hole.
” Myers, a heavy weap.