Some sad news came this way this morning from Jim Coen of Wilmington: His uncle, Mike Smith, whom we wrote about last summer after he learned that the long-lost site where the Air Force aircraft carrying his brother Gene crashed in Alaska in 1952 had been found, has died.
His obituary ran in this morning's News Journal.
Mike Smith holds an old photograph of his brother, Army Col. Gene Smith, outside his Wilmington home last summer after the rediscovery of the wreckage of the Air Force plane his brother was killed aboard when it crashed in Alaska in 1952. // News Journal photo by Emily Varisco
Mike, 90, was a sweet guy and a pleasure to meet. And when we went up to his home in Newport last July, he was practically giddy with the news. Mind you, neither his brother's remains nor any single artifact had been found. What had the household and extended family abuzz was that the crash site, which had been spotted a week after the Nov. 22, 1952, mishap but was thought to have been subsequently covered by a glacier, had been located. Officials said the debris field was about eight miles from the wreckage was first spotted.
"None of us could believe that," said Coen, who was born three years after his uncle's death but said Gene Smith's exploits were a big part of family lore. "We figured we'd never hear anything about it again. ... Pretty amazing story."
We revisited the discovery on Memorial Day as part of a story about three perspectives on loss and grief resolution: those to whom remains are returned, those who for whom they are not and those who, like Mike Smith, received some measure of resolution.
No trace of Gene Smith has yet been found - or, at least, verified and announced, as military officials take all possible measures to positively identify all remains and to locate a family member of each lost service member, particularly when a group has died, before presenting their findings. Fifty-two perished in the Globemaster crash.
But the Air Force did provide Mike with a piece of metal from the wreckage. We didn't get a chance to talk with Mike about it, but Coen said it meant a lot to him. "It was special," Coen said. "It was part of him, you know?"
