Athens World War II soldier laid to rest 82 years after death
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MARIETTA - When Spencer Rutter got the call that after more than eight decades, his uncle's remains had been identified, it didn't take him long to tell the Army where they should end up.
"They belong at Maplewood Cemetery in Glouster, with his parents," Rutter, an 83-year-old Marietta resident, said.
According to the federal Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Army Air Forces Sgt. Myron Lee Yaw, an Athens County native, was identified on June 25. He served in the 828th Bombardment Squadron, 485th Bombardment Group, and was killed the day after Christmas in 1944 when the B-24J Liberator on which he was the ball turret gunner was struck by anti-aircraft fire and crashed near the village of Korzonek, Poland.
It's not the homecoming Rutter's grandparents envisioned when their son went overseas to serve in the Army Air Forces. But it's one his mother, Betty Jane Rutter, Yaw's sister, hoped for as the years went on.
A DPAA release says an archaeological survey of the crash site was completed in 2018. Rutter said his mother provided a DNA sample that year. Though she passed away in 2019, her sample eventually led to the positive identification of her brother's remains.
"She knew they had remains, and they probably had his remains," Rutter said. "She would have been beside herself" to know it was confirmed.
Rutter said his mother was extremely close to his Uncle Lee, one of two brothers she lost in the war. And Lee Yaw was a doting uncle who was so excited to have a nephew that Rutter wound up being the mascot on his uncle's plane. An image painted on the plane featured a baby wearing boxing gloves and the name "Butch," his uncle's nickname for him.
"I was the inspiration for nose art on an airplane," Rutter said. "If he had survived the war, I would have been one spoiled nephew."
Yaw's remains were returned to Ohio on Sept. 25 and escorted from the airport in Columbus back to Athens County. A funeral was held on Saturday.
Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.