For more than 54 years, a Bay Area woman has wondered what happened to her husband, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot missing in action during the Vietnam War.
Now at age 90, Joyce De Soto of Burlingame finally has answers.
They were high school sweethearts at Balboa High School in San Francisco before tying the knot.
"He had the most beautiful smile, and he was really sweet and really smart," De Soto said of her late husband Ernie De Soto.
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The De Sotos had three children and were married for 12 years before the family received devastating news: Ernie was reported missing in action during a mission in Vietnam. His son Craig was just 8 years old.
"I remember the day they knocked on the door and said that dad had become missing," Craig said.
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For more than 50 years, Joyce said she wondered if her husband was alive, captured or being tortured. She said she joined forces with other women in the same situation pressing the government for answers.
"We would meet secretly because we were told to be quiet, not to say anything, because the war was not popular," Joyce recalled.
Decades later in 2021, a U.S. recovery agency working with a team in Vietnam searched the remote site where Ernie De Soto's plane was shot down, and they discovered a bone. More than a year later, scientists using mitichondrial DNA confirmed the bone belonged to De Soto.
Crews also recovered a zipper from his flight suit.
They are answers Joyce thought she’d never have in her lifetime.
"It's closure," she said. "He’s here, he didn't suffer. He was killed in the airplane, which I have never known."
The De Sotos' daughter Denise says the identification gives her peace of mind.
"It means a lot, it really means a lot. He can be put to rest, and we feel better knowing that he was not being tortured and other awfulness," Denise said.
Joyce admits she is still stunned more than half a century later she can finally close one painful chapter.
"It’s bittersweet because you held him alive for a long time," she said.
The family is now planning a funeral for the Purple Heart recipient to take place Friday at Golden Gate Cemetery in San Bruno. It will include a military flyover.
