Inquirer Staff Writer
(Published in South Jersey News, 21-06-2010)
Gini Doolittle never knew her cousin, but her family talked so often of his mysterious disappearance that she felt a close bond.
Lt. Joseph Auld was their "lost hero," she said, a pilot who "flew the hump" over the Himalayas during World War II until he and his aircraft disappeared in 1944.
Doolittle spent hours paging through an album of photos showing Auld and her father, Charles Wilderman, a technical sergeant and radio operator who flew similar missions from India to Burma and China.
Later, Doolittle, a professor at Rowan University, came to know Auld better through a diary he left behind.
She never expected his remains to be recovered, much less that he and others in his crew would be celebrated at Arlington National Cemetery 66 years after their deaths.
The airmen will be remembered July 15 in funeral services at the Old Post Chapel, just outside the cemetery gate. A caisson will then take their remains to a grave site where they will honored in patriotic ceremonies and by a fighter-jet flyover.
"I opened a package at my house in September, and inside was a spiral-bound report that said [the Army had] identified him," said Doolittle, 64, of Sicklerville. "I was speechless."
Doolittle was likewise stunned to meet a brother of one of the six others on Auld's C-47. She and Robert Frantz of Lindenwold met at a survivors meeting held by the Defense Department.
"Imagine my surprise to be seated with a relative of another crew member," she said. "He lived just a few miles away."
Frantz, 72, last saw his big brother, Tech. Sgt. Clarence E. Frantz, just before the latter was deployed in 1942, and he has treasured his memories and photos.
To find his plane "means a lot to me," Frantz said. "It's still emotional."
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