KNOCK

It was eleven thirty at night, deep in the Arkansas outback. A front was coming in and a stiff cold wind was blowing out of the North. Then an unlikely thing occurred. There was a knock at the door. Betty and I lock eyes. The unspoken and underlying thought is  .  .  . .  . trouble !

 

The messenger at the door, had, however, no bad news that night. Though a phone call would have done it, news of this magnitude required personal delivery. For after all, a Ouachita Mountain boy that went off to war, would finally be coming home.

Here in the Ouachita’s we almost never called it a conflict, as the media was doing. We knew and could recognize,  war when we saw it, and many here saw it first hand. Korea.

Our messenger had word about a mountain boy that never made it back from Korea, had finally been identified in North Korea, and his remains would be soon coming home.

Years had passed and family members, still hoping for news,  had submitted DNA samples. Then after all these years, word came.

Here is a look at the current marker, it says on the bottom, “at rest in North Korea”.