BOISE, Idaho \u2014 The Saturday before Veterans Day, on a glorious autumn day when Boiseans were honoring veterans with a festive parade, Jorja Reyburn wasn\u2019t there. Instead, she was in a quiet meeting room with officials from the Department of Defense who were reporting their painfully slow progress to families of service members who have never returned from war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From World War II through the Cold War, 82,423 service members are still missing in action. One of those is Reyburn\u2019s father, 1st Lt. James Elliott, who raised his hand to go to Korea. He\u2019s been missing for 67 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI just feel like he knows that we\u2019re keeping up the good fight,\u201d Reyburn says. \u201cAnd I think he\u2019d be proud that we haven\u2019t given up on him. And, of course, we never will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A POW\/MIA flag flies out front of Reyburn\u2019s Star home. Inside, she\u2019s turned the dining room into a memorial for her father to keep him present in her mind and in her life. A quilt in memory of her father hangs in red, white and blue on the wall next to photos and her nephew\u2019s sketch of Elliott. On the table, a 6-inch tall binder is crammed with detailed information she\u2019s gathered and supporting documents are piled neatly in stacks beside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was hoping we would have resolved this in my mom\u2019s lifetime,\u201d Reyburn says. But her mother died in 2015, and Reyburn made a promise to her. Her daughters and her nephews are on notice about their responsibilities as well when the time comes to pass on the search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping. I mean, my oldest grandchild is 30 years old. And my dad was 29 when he went missing. It\u2019s just something our family will keep up with until \u2014 until he\u2019s home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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As soon as he turned 18 in 1939, Elliott joined the National Guard. He then joined the Army in 1944. Although he went AWOL from a hospital in an attempt to join his unit shipping overseas, an appendectomy kept him stateside. \u201cThank God he was sent back to the hospital,\u201d Reyburn says, \u201cor we probably wouldn\u2019t be having this conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elliott met Reyburn\u2019s mother after he was discharged from service in Southern California, but he missed the military life and re-enlisted in 1946.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThen the war broke out and my dad was one of the first to sign up,\u201d she said. \u201d. That\u2019s just how he was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elliott called home the night he was shipping out \u2014 as he and his wife had arranged \u2014 but Reyburn\u2019s mother was in the hospital with, coincidentally, her own appendectomy. In the days before phones were ubiquitous, he tried at the hospital but missed her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey never spoke again,\u201d Reyburn says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elliott landed in Korea on Aug. 9 and was reported missing Aug. 27, 1950.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Reyburn\u2019s mother happened to have taken a photo of Reyburn and her brother riding their tricycles one day. On it, she\u2019s written: \u201cSept. 10, 1950. Date of telegram.\u201d Reyburn was only 2 years old and has no memories of her father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd not only did I not know my dad,\u201d she said, \u201cbut my brother and I were never told what happened to our dad. We just knew we didn\u2019t have a dad, for whatever reason. We had pictures of our dad, but we didn\u2019t know what the association was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back then, she says, single-parent families were unusual and kids at school would tease them. Then her mother remarried, so she had a different last name than them, and kids teased them about that, too. When Reyburn took her First Communion, however, the communion certificate said \u201cstatus of father: defunct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was 9 years old. . I got the dictionary out and I looked it up,\u201d she said. \u201cIt said \u2018no longer exists.\u2019 I thought, wow, but I never asked my mother. I just accepted the fact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, after Reyburn\u2019s stepfather died, she talked with her mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe said, \u2018Well, back in those days, people just didn\u2019t talk about it,\u2019 \u201d Reyburn said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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And then came the internet. One day in the 1990s, Reyburn sat down and typed her father\u2019s name on a computer \u2014 and she got results. His name showed up in the National Archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI felt like I\u2019d won the lottery,\u201d she says. \u201d(The search) just kind of takes on a life of its own. One thing leads to another and I would spend literally hours .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She pauses. \u201cI think it\u2019s love (that keeps me looking). And I made the promise to my mom that I would keep up the search.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She wipes away tears and holds up a bumper sticker to express her emotions: \u201cWhen one American is not worth the effort to be found, we as Americans have lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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First Lt. Elliott was involved in the battle of Naktong Bulge, along the Naktong River in Korea. Reyburn has detailed maps and points to Hill 409 where her father volunteered for night patrol. Five men were killed that night. Three bodies were recovered; two were not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are theories. One is that Elliott was killed that night and his body was taken, first to a temporary cemetery nearby and later to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl Crater in Honolulu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s what her brother firmly believes, and that their father was misidentified or his dog tags lost. There is evidence that supports this: Reyburn, her mother and brother interviewed two servicemen. One witnessed their father\u2019s body being placed on a tank, removed from the battlefield and taken to the temporary cemetery. The second serviceman kept a handwritten pocket notebook that records Elliott as killed that night. Not all of the names in his notebook are accurate \u2014 but enough of them to give his account great credibility in Reyburn\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The military, however, believes the North Koreans took his uniform and that his body hasn\u2019t been recovered yet. Reyburn doesn\u2019t buy that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another, more painful, theory: A prisoner of war returnee gave an official report that says he saw Elliott at a POW camp in North Korea. Officials have told Reyburn that wouldn\u2019t have been possible, that no one could survive a march that long and that arduous. She gets out the maps again. It\u2019s a long way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut here is another soldier (that I\u2019ve learned about) that went missing in South Korea on Sept 6, right around the time that my dad did. . He died while captured as a POW, so he survived the march. If he survived the march, why couldn\u2019t my dad survive the march?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s not the story Reyburn wants to believe \u2014 she\u2019s learned way more than she wants to know about the horrors of the Korean War. But knowing anything with some sense of certainty would be better than nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In 2015, Reyburn and her brother went to South Korea as part of the Korea Revisit Program, where American soldiers, killed or missing, and their families, were honored by South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was absolutely incredible,\u201d she says. \u201cThey are so thankful for their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reyburn and her brother went to the area where their father went missing for a ceremony along the Naktong River. The South Koreans presented them with a pair of wreaths decorated with ribbons naming their father. Reyburn brought one of the wreaths home, but the other, they placed in the river\u2019s current along with some of their mother\u2019s ashes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSunny Lee, our guide, told us it was a Korean custom that when you put a wreath in the river like that, that the souls are reunited,\u201d Reyburn says. \u201cAnd it was just a beautiful ceremony.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This January, Reyburn and her husband will host two cadets from the Korea Army Academy. They couldn\u2019t be more excited and proud. It\u2019s part of a new program called Heroes Remembered and they\u2019ll take the cadets to the VA Medical Center, the Veterans Home and the VFW so they can personally thank as many Korean War veterans as possible. \u201cWe\u2019re going to show them Boise,\u201d Reyburn says. \u201cAnd tell them all about our dad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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On the Saturday before Veterans Day, Reyburn and her brother got a glimmer of hope, the first they\u2019ve ever had: Some unidentified remains are going to be tested to see if they\u2019re a match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They\u2019re cautiously optimistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s also questioning some smudges on her father\u2019s Deceased Personnel File. It looks like information has been erased \u2014 or at least it\u2019s illegible \u2014 under the headings \u201ccemetery, plot, row and grave.\u201d A historian with the disinterment program has promised to search for the original records. Although, Reyburn notes, the wheels of the Defense POW\/MIA Accounting Agency turn excruciatingly slowly. (The agency, in fact, has been taken to task by Congress for inefficiency and expense.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s become a de facto CSI detective, following tiny leads, checking and cross-checking names, places, dates. When she and her brother interviewed two men who served with her father, they recorded their interviews, double-checked their stories, and submitted the evidence to the accounting agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI know a lot of people are probably wondering why I get so emotional after so many years,\u201d she says. \u201cI mean, I\u2019m 69 years old. I never really knew my father.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reyburn hunts for an analogy. Like, if, say, one of your relatives went to the store and vanished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou would always hope that that person would come back, or you would always wonder what in the world happened to that person,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd you would never give up the search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how I feel about my dad. You can never give up on love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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