Re: Relatives of MIA Airman Sought

Date: February 10, 2004

"Relatives of MIA airman sought

By Dale Killingbeck, Staff Writer


CADILLAC - Walter O. Schlosser lived and died in a generation acquainted with loss.

With many other young Americans he offered his life as a patriot. It seems certain that on July 7, 1944, a German fighter plane extinguished it.

A story about the Lake City man who served as gunner on a B-24 flying from England on a mission over Germany appeared in the Feb. 2 Cadillac News. The News seeks information about any relatives of then young airmen for possible DNA testing.

Remains from the crew on Walter's plane were found in a German field after a three-year search in October 2002 and are now at the Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.

Officials familiar with the procedure say the DNA match has to come from his mother's side of the family.

"It's mitochondrial DNA," said Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii. "Going back generations you can connect the dots."

He said a brother or sister of Walter, or his mother's sister and her descendants, would be eligible to provide a match. So would any descendants from Walter's sister.

Manton's Gertrude Johnson knew Walter because he, along with his mother, brother and sister, lived with her father, Walter Proctor.

Hazel separated from her husband, Otto, in the Detroit area and moved to Lake City with her children in he late 1930s. "My real dad needed a housekeeper and she went to work at his place as housekeeper," she said. "She stayed there until she died."

Johnson's mother died when she was 3 years old. She was adopted out because her father could not take care of her.

But she grew up knowing her father and visiting him at the farm.

Walter remains vivid in her memories.

"He was an awful good kid. He went to Lake City schools. He was a crack shot and a good hunter."

She thinks Walter enlisted in the Army rather than wait to be drafted. She doesn't remember much about Babe, who was Hazel's daughter from a previous marriage, or Robert, except that they were older. She believes Robert moved to the Detroit or Manistee areas and thinks Babe moved back to the Lake City area in her retirement.

"Babe was older than I was and Robert was in his 20s," she said, casting herself as in the early 20s at the time.

Ted Jones of Cadillac also remembers the family.

"When I was a little kid, my dad and I would go to my Aunt Hazel'" Jones said. He doesn't remember much about Walter.

"I'd seen him when I was little, that's all, he said. "We used to go out there for dinner on Sunday."

Jeanne Schultz of Cadillac knew the Schlosser family because her parents operated the neighborhood business.

"I was a Largent at that time," she said. "We owned the Maury store."

She was six or seven years younger than Walter, but he made an impression on her.

"He was a handsome guy and I was in love with him," she laughed. Her mother and Walter's mother were good friends.

Schultz remembers the news about Walter and its effect on his mother and herself.

"She was devastated. We all were, because he was one of us."

Hazel Schlosser's loss affected how she spent money she received from the government after Walter was declared missing.

"She got a pension from that and she would not use a penny on herself," Johnson said. Instead, Hazel Schlosser would look

for children in need and use the money to help them.

"A lot of things she gave anonymously because she couldn't use any money from his being gone," she said. She also

recalls Walter's devotion to his mom.

"He was just a good person," she said. "He was awful good to his mother."


Anyone with information about Walter's sister or brother and their descendants is asked to call the Cadillac News at 231-775-6564.

Copyright © 2004 Cadillac News, Cadillac, Michigan"