A military funeral brings family together
By Christine Byers
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
WASHINGTON Ñ Betty Ann Shaw's petite frame shivered as she grasped the handrail inside the elevator to keep herself from collapsing under her anticipation.
The doors opened and she saw the aunts she had never met.
"We've been looking for you forever," said Evelyn Barry of Tuscon, Ariz. Barry, 73, who along with her sisters, Pat Sweet, 70, of Fredricktown, Mo., and Beulah Pickett, 67, of Shrewsbury, had wondered if this moment would come in time for the burial of their brother, the man they believe is Betty Ann's father.
Betty Ann Shaw is now 57, and her father, Sgt. Francis Eugene Lindsay, was declared missing in action in the Korean War. Last year the military identified his remains, ending years of uncertainty for his sisters.
On Thursday he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. In his death, he brought together a daughter he never knew and the sisters who hadn't seen him since their childhood in St. Francois County.
On Memorial Day, the Post-Dispatch published a front page story about the sisters' quest to find their brother's wife and child.
That story sparked the interest of Cyndy Woller of Arnold, a geneology buff. She was able to track down an obituary for Doris Jane Gibson, Lindsay's wife. On Jan. 10, 2004, Doris Jane died from congestive heart failure in New Albany, Ind., at age 70.
Woller's involvement ultimately led to Betty Ann Shaw, Lindsay's only child and the oldest of Doris Jane Gibson's five children.
Doris Jane Gibson was born in 1933 in Jeffersonville, Ind. She was the only girl among eight boys.
When she was 15, she married a 19-year-old soldier, Lindsay, at the St. Louis Courthouse.
Lindsay was the only boy from a family of four born in Esther, now part of Park Hills.
Charles Gibson said he doesn't know how his sister met the soldier, whom she called "Gene."
"I don't think it lasted all that long, and it was a marriage of convenience," Charles Gibson said.
In 1949, Doris Jane got pregnant and she also met a man named James "Tunney" Hall. She married him and her first child, Betty Ann, was born four months later on Jan. 22, 1950.
Four more children, including a sister and two brothers, came after that. And so did the teasing, Betty Ann said.
"I can remember as a kid, my mother's sisters would tease me and say Tunney isn't your daddy's name, it's Gene," Betty Ann said. "My mother would always tell them to stop."
But she never said it wasn't true, Betty Ann added.
In the late 1980s, Tunney Hall was about to undergo heart surgery and was in need of a blood transfusion. Doctors turned to Betty Ann and her siblings for donations. He returned to the waiting room where the siblings had gathered and told them one by one their blood types.
Betty Ann's four younger siblings all had type AB blood. Betty Ann's was O.
In 2002, Doris Jane's heart started to fail, and Betty Ann, along with her daughters, Angel Jackson and Beth Ann Ferree, began spending a lot of time caring for her.
Perhaps sensing her own mortality, Doris spoke to her daughter and granddaughters about her first marriage. But she kept it brief. She said that he was a nice, good-looking boy named Gene and that she received military papers in 1953 saying that he had been presumed dead.
Gene had been assigned to the 8th Cavalry Regiment when Chinese forces attacked on the night of Nov. 1-2, 1950. After the battle, nearly 400 soldiers from the unit were declared missing or killed in action. Lindsay was declared missing, according to the U.S. Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.
Lindsay's remains were one of 10 discovered in a mass burial site by a farmer living near Unsan, North Korea, in 2000.
On Thursday, Betty Ann Shaw, along with her daughters, were at the grave site in Arlington.
Less than 48 hours before, they had learned that Lindsay was being buried.
They made it to Washington in time for a late-night dinner with the Lindsay sisters. Evelyn Barry pulled the ring that was found at Gene's burial site out of her purse and gave it to Betty Ann.
"It's yours if you want it," she said.
Betty Ann slipped it on her finger and marveled at the dull and worn gold as if it were a 20-carat diamond. "It fits perfectly."
Then, Thursday morning, the Lindsay sisters invited Betty Ann to ride in the family's limousine.
Once at Arlington, a military official told Betty Ann that the Army is researching ways to conduct a DNA test to prove whether she is Lindsay's daughter.
She then sat beside the Lindsay sisters in the front four seats next to the casket as tears fell down her face from underneath her sunglasses.
After the ceremony, the sisters each placed a rose on the casket. Betty Ann cradled hers in her arms. She kept her eyes focused on the casket until it disappeared into the ground, then turned back in her seat and began to sob.
"It's just not fair," she said, as Beulah embraced her. "I never got to know him and I never got to know you. ... But I am somebody, I belong to somebody."
As the families said their goodbyes at the hotel, they promised to keep in touch. "If this is my daddy," Betty Ann said, "then I've found a new family. And if not, I've found some new friends."
St. Louis, MO