`He belongs with his mom'
By EVA LOAYZA - Staff Writer
EWING - The last time John Mellodge saw his neighbor, John Williamson Jr., was on a warm, sunny day in 1950.
Mellodge said he was "running around the neighborhood" when he spotted Williamson, dressed in his Army uniform, coming out of a church then located on Hawthorne Avenue.
Mellodge, who was 7 at the time, was good friends with Williamson's younger stepbrother, Stephen Harwaldt. They grew up around the corner from each other in the Brae Burn Heights neighborhood, said Mellodge.
As they walked back to Williamson's house, the young soldier told Mellodge he had just given the church $5, which "was a lot of money" back then, and that he was going to Korea.
"I always remembered that day. He wasn't a church-goer. But he was scared. He was trying to buy his way into heaven," said Mellodge.
Sgt. Williamson, a member of the 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, was taken prisoner while fighting the enemy in North Korea in November and died in captivity three months later. He was 19. His remains were never returned to the states.
Decades have passed since the encounter between the soldier and the boy and while the details have faded, Mellodge never forgot Williamson's words.
With Williamson's mother, stepfather and stepbrother deceased, Mellodge, now 61, has taken it upon himself to bring the soldier home. He began a search for any living relatives of Williamson about 1 1/2 years ago in hopes of providing his former neighbor with a "proper" military funeral and a final resting place.
"I think instead of him just fading into nothing, there should be something somewhere that says this man gave his life for his country," said Mellodge, his eyes tearing.
According to the Korean War Project - a nonprofit organization in Texas that maintains a public database of Korean War casualties - at least 860 of the 8,177 Korean War servicemen designated missing in action are buried at the Punchbowl, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. "If we get DNA, he has a right to come home," Mellodge said.
Being much younger than Williamson, Mellodge knows little about him. What Mellodge does know are tidbits offered by his older brother, who was closer to Williamson's age. Mellodge said his brother told him Williamson hated a phony and was tough, but a really nice guy.
"He stopped to talk to me when I was small," offers Mellodge as proof. "He didn't have to do that. I was much smaller."
But as a veteran, he feels a responsibility. "Every time I went by a POW sign, I always remembered him, you know, like the flag, I always remembered him. Something would happen in Korea, my thoughts would always go back to him," he said.
Mellodge, who served in the U.S. Navy for two years but never saw battle has had no luck finding blood relatives of Williamson, but is not ready to give up.
He has contacted Rep. Chris Smith, R-Hamilton, who chairs the House Committee on Veteran Affairs, for assistance, and hopes to have Williamson recognized in the township's Veterans Memorial.
Mellodge said when Harwaldt told him Williamson was missing in action, "I remember telling him, `We're gonna go over and beat all the North Koreans up.' We were just little kids."
When North Korea released the names of American POWs, Mellodge said he and Harwaldt sat in front of the TV, "looking to see if his name ever showed up." It never did.
Mellodge said years later, the family was told Williamson had died. "I used to go over the (Williamson) house, and (his mother) always had a picture of him up in the living room but she never talked about it," he said.
Mellodge said the death report indicates Williamson died of dysentery and hepatitis, but without any other information about his time in captivity, Mellodge fears Williamson "must have had a horrible death."
"November is cold as hell in Korea. The Chinese came across the border, swamped them, cut off their escape route. They probably took his coat, probably gave him dirty water. He died of diarrhea, (but) you know, he was perfectly healthy in November," said Mellodge, wiping tears from his eyes.
Mellodge said there's a burial plot waiting for Williamson in Riverview Cemetery in Trenton, where his mother, stepfather and stepbrother are buried.
Mellodge said his mother always told him, "The only thing you're going to leave in this world is your kin."
A father of three, Mellodge said, "Family means more when you get older" and hopes one day Williamson will be reunited with his.
"I'd like to see him come home, be buried with his mom," said Mellodge. "He belongs with his mom."
© 2004 The Times