Kevin Caid's search for his uncle's remains began with a Christmas gift to his mother some two decades ago.
His uncle's name -- Robert Dale Van Fossen -- was the first phrase the 58-year-old ever typed into a search engine during the early days of the World Wide Web. He could hardly believe the amount of information that search returned about the 1952 Alaskan plane crash that killed the uncle he never knew.
Online, he found a 300-page accident report that detailed the Globemaster C-124's crash into Mount Gannett. He ordered a copy of the report and wrapped it up for his mother.
The look in her eyes when she opened the report that explained how her beloved older brother was taken from her 50 years before inspired Caid to embark on a decade-and-a-half journey to find his uncle.
"The look in her eyes," the Little Rock man said. "You could see the love she had for her brother."
The search, though, wasn't just to find his uncle; it was to get to know him. That quest has taken him door to door in Greenbrier and over Alaska in a helicopter.
It ended Thursday on the tarmac at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field in Little Rock when the U.S. Air Force escorted Van Fossen's remains back to his home state. His coffin exited the commercial plane beneath an American flag, and a crew of airmen carried Van Fossen's remains to a hearse.
The deceased airman will finally be laid to rest today in Heber Springs with full military honors.
Van Fossen, a graduate of Greenbrier High School's class of 1949, was one of the 52 men aboard the 1952 flight bound for Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage.
A passenger plane picked up a distress call from the Globemaster, but the airwaves went dead soon after, according to the Air Force.
Dangerous weather and terrain kept recovery teams at bay for several days, and helicopters didn't yet have today's hovering capabilities.
The president of the University of Alaska spotted the plane's tail section five days after the crash, and military personnel hiked to the crash site several days later, confirming the wreckage and the fatalities.
Fierce winds and bitter cold prevented the teams from conducting a proper recovery. Families like the Van Fossens were notified that their loved ones had died and they'd have nothing to bury.
Caid said his grandmother, Ruby, was at peace with the military's decision to terminate search efforts.
"She said, 'Nobody can bring my son back, and no one else needs to die,'" Caid said. "That's the type of lady she was."
During his search for information, Caid went door-to-door in Greenbrier trying to find anyone who knew his uncle. He's surprised that the police were never called on him.
Caid, a regional vice president for a national merchandising company, printed his cellphone number in the local newspaper, asking anyone with information about his uncle to call.
He's talked with several people who have helped him piece together a picture of the uncle he knew only through his mother's stories and a portrait that sat in his grandparents' living room.
"If you believe just half of what they say, he was a pretty decent guy," Caid said.
Van Fossen lied about his age in 1947 to join the Arkansas Army National Guard. He joined the Air Force after graduating from high school two years later.
The Air Force took note of his intelligence and sent him to language school, where he quickly learned Russian.
His assignment in Alaska is unclear because his service record files were destroyed in a fire at the St. Louis facility where they were housed, Caid said, but the assignment came at the genesis of the Cold War.
Unfortunately, Caid's search faced interruptions and setbacks and was put on the back burner through much of the 2000s.
It seemed the wreckage and his uncle's remains were forever destined to be buried beneath the snow-swept ridges of southern Alaska, until June 2012, when Caid's father read a blurb in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Black Hawk helicopter belonging to the Alaska National Guard had noticed debris on a glacier nearly 12 miles from the spot where the Globemaster plunged nose-first into the rock 60 years before, the newspaper reported.
It was Van Fossen's plane.
Since the wreckage was discovered, the Air Force has sent teams during summer months to search for any human remains. Allen Cronin, an Air Force mortuary specialist, leads the search efforts, including one next month.
So far, Cronin said, DNA has been matched to 37 of 52 crash victims. He's hopeful this summer's search will find more.
"It's anybody's guess," he said. "You just never know."
At least one other Arkansan was aboard the plane with Van Fossen. The remains of Batemen Roscoe Burns, an airman from Marvell, were returned to his family last year.
Caid was able to tell his mother about the discovery of the wreckage, but she died in 2012 before her brother's remains were unearthed.
When Cronin's team began finding human remains, Caid and his sister sent off DNA samples in hopes of a match.
In 2013, Caid took a few days off after a business trip in Alaska to charter a helicopter. He flew over the crash site, which has now been named Globemaster Peak.
"It was an eerie feeling being at the point of impact," he said.
That same year, searchers found Van Fossen's dog tags but no remains.
The call came in March 2015: Skeletal and soft tissue that belonged to Caid's uncle had been positively identified.
The burial has waited until now to give the military time to find more remains and to ensure that as many surviving family members as possible could be in Little Rock when Van Fossen's remains were returned. It's merely a coincidence that it's Memorial Day weekend, Caid said.
What would his mother think about all this?
"She'd be pleased," Caid said.
That, he added, is what's been driving him all these years.
A Section on 05/27/2017