SUFFOLK, Va. (WVEC) --- His family first said goodbye 66 years ago.
That is when Army Corporal Louis Damewood went to war and never came back.
“You wondered,” said Damewood’s niece Barbara Vogt. “You wondered what happened.”
But on a rainy Friday at the Albert G. Horton Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery in Suffolk, the soldier has found a place in peace.
He was reunited with his family, and with his niece, who never forgot him.
“This will be etched in my mind forever,” said Vogt.
Damewood was a POW during the Korean War. He was just 21 years old when he left home, and his remains were never identified.
But after more than six decades, a DNA test linked the soldier to his niece Barbara. The last time she saw him she was 11 years old.
“I got a call they had identified him,” said Vogt. “It took my breath away.”
The family can’t get back the lost time, but they can cherish this one last memory.
Damewood received full military honors at his burial Friday morning.