DAVID FERRARA

Press-Register

MOBILE, Ala. — A Navy casualty affairs officer is scheduled to arrive at Elizabeth Huff's Birmingham-area home at 10 a.m. Thursday to officially notify her of her grandfather's death.

She's known about it all her life.

Lt. Woodie Lackland McVay Jr., a Mobile native, has been dead for more than 65 years, shot down over the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

There is a marker with his name in Mobile's Pine Crest Cemetery, but until recently, no one was sure where he was buried.

McVay's plane was shot down as he strafed seaplanes on Feb. 22, 1944, somewhere over Saipan. For six decades, the military categorized him as missing in action and dead.

Now, with the culmination of more than three years of work by Huff and World War II researcher Ted Darcy, the Navy squadron leader who flew an F6F Hellcat is being brought home. He should be buried within a month in Mobile, alongside his parents, who died decades ago without knowing where their son's body lay.

"I believe in afterlife, and I believe that we are very connected," Huff said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were watching us on the other side and praying for us."

When the officer comes to Huff's door, it will be a formality, but for Huff, the moment represents closure.

"This is not a made-up story," Huff said. "This makes it all the more real. Seeing it through to bringing him home is that much more important because it was clear that his parents wanted him home."

Darcy first contacted McVay's family in June 2006, saying he was certain he could find the lieutenant's body. A Vietnam veteran from Massachusetts, Darcy has spent years tracking the remains of World War II soldiers buried in graves without their names. Several years ago, he received McVay's autopsy report from a New Zealand researcher who stumbled upon the file.

The original report had been mixed in with classified documents on an investigation into war crimes. Darcy scrolled through the enormous database he created more than a decade ago and found McVay's name.

Huff immediately began to help. For two years, she wrote legislators and pestered the military for records on dead unknown soldiers.

"The credit goes to them," said Ken Terry, head of the POW-MIA branch with the Bureau of Naval Personnel. "We only confirmed what they found."

Huff keeps a 3-year-old newspaper clipping in the office of her home between Mountain Brook and Irondale. The photo on the front page of the local news section shows the Alabama Veterans Memorial in Birmingham. In it, she can see her grandfather's name.

She wears the ring he offered his bride, the former Annie Ruth Heidelburg, now Annie Ruth Owen of Bay Minette.

Again and again, Huff pores over letters from pilots who flew with him. She stares at pictures of him, one in his dress white uniform, another in combat fatigues, standing before a fighter aircraft. She has visited his childhood home and met family she didn't know she had. Her mother, Diane, who was McVay's only child, died in 1995, never having known him.

Last year, Darcy determined that remains buried as "Saipan Unknown X-35" matched the physical characteristics of McVay. The dental records were identical.

In February, after Darcy proved to the military that he could point them to McVay's body, it was disinterred from the grave at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines and sent to Hawaii.

On Thursday, Terry said, the Navy will follow military protocol and offer Huff any of her grandfather's remaining personal effects and a report on how he died, just as if he were a soldier killed in Iraq two weeks ago.

Huff said she is proud to finally have the opportunity to bury her grandfather, with the full military honors he has always deserved.

Alabama: Shot down in '44, WWII officer's remains come home