Widow Receives Vet's Remains, 63 Years Later

Joseph Gantt was killed in Korean War
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 21, 2013 5:30 AM CST
Widow Receives Vet's Remains, 63 Years Later
Clara Gantt, the 94-year-old widow of U.S. Army Sgt. Joseph Gantt, weeps in front of her her husband's casket in Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Andrew Renneisen, Pool)

The photo pretty much says it all: There is 94-year-old Clara Gantt weeping at the coffin of the husband who finally returned from the Korean War after more than six decades. Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph E. Gantt was a field medic who was injured and captured in December 1950, and who was presumed to have died a few months later in a POW camp, recounts AP. But his remains were never identified, and Clara Gantt waited for him all this time.

"He told me if anything happened to him he wanted me to remarry," she said yesterday at Los Angeles International Airport. "I told him no, no. Here I am, still his wife." The LA Times adds this detail: She bought a home in Inglewood after the war, but, knowing her husband hated yardwork, hired a gardener to maintain it so he wouldn't have to deal with it upon his return. "I always did love my husband," she said. "We was two of one kind, we loved each other. And that made our marriage complete." (More Joseph Gantt stories.)

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