Early on the morning of Dec. 8, 1941, nine Japanese fighter planes swooped down on Malalag Bay in the Philippines and strafed and sunk two U.S. Navy seaplanes at the very outset of World War II.

All of the Americans escaped unharmed except Ensign Robert G. Tills, 23, of Manitowoc, Wis., who was cut down by machine gun bullets.

Courtesy Tills family

Ensign Robert G. Tills seen in his Navy Whites before he was gunned down by Japanese fighter planes on Dec. 8, 1941.

"Ensign Robert Tills died in the fusillade of bullets from the Japanese strafers, the first American naval officer killed in the defense of the Philippines," the Naval Historical Center wrote.

Tills' sister Jean was 11 years old at the time.

"Our minister heard over the radio that he was among the missing and called us," she said recently. "Then somebody came to the house a couple of weeks later and said he was killed."

But Tills' body was not recovered. Memories were all that Jean and her parents and sister had of their beloved Bob.

"Airplanes and flying, that was his passion," Jean Aplin, now 78, remembers. "He wanted to do that from the time he was little. I was just very proud of him and idolized him. He was my hero."

Tills, whom the Navy named a destroyer escort after in 1943, was one of 78,000 Americans still missing from World War II.

"I always thought the Filipinos had probably found him and buried him somewhere over there," Jean said.

She had pretty much given up hope of ever learning what had become of her brother when the Navy notified her this past summer that his remains had been recovered from aircraft wreckage in Malalag Bay and identified through his dental records.

"Oh, I'm very happy about it," she said, "because I'm the only one left, and I've just always wondered, and I'm glad he's finally coming home."

But the story doesn't end there.

"We found the girl he was going to marry, his fiancée, and she is still alive and in good health," Jean said.

Jean, who lives in Colorado Springs, Colo., found Vicki Quandt Lee through the Internet, living in Hendersonville, N.C.

"She married somebody named Robert E. Lee, and she just couldn't call him Bob, so she always called him Lee," Jean said.

Now 89 and widowed, Vicki hopes to join Jean on March 23 when Bob Tills is finally laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

WASHINGTON – America honors its veterans one day of the year, on Nov. 11. Spc. John Tilley and his fellow tomb sentinels honor them every day of the year.

Tilley is one of 24 soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. They are part of the 3rd Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), the Army's oldest active infantry unit.

"We are incredibly proud of what we do," he says.

Tilley and the other sentinels guard the tomb every hour of the day, every day of the year.

U.S. Army

One of the sentinels guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

"Since 1937 we've never left our post, and that's in every type of weather you can imagine," he says.

Even when Hurricane Isabel was bearing down on the area, in 2003, the sentinels stood their ground.

"They gave the option to leave our post, and the sentinels honorably declined," Tilley says.

That was the only time the sentinels were given that choice. They live by their Sentinel Creed, which states in part, "My standard will remain perfection."

Honor in the details
That perfection is reflected in the way they guard the Tomb of the Unknowns. They walk exactly 21 steps, pivot, wait 21 seconds and retrace their 21 steps for as long as two hours at a time.

"Twenty-one is the highest honor that you can give to the military – the 21-gun salute," Tilley explains. "Everything we do here is off the count of 21."

Another example of their perfection is their spotless appearance. The sentinels spend four to six hours each day just shining their shoes between guard walks.

"That's one pair of shoes," Tilley says. "To get a brand new pair of shoes ready to go takes about 40 to 50 hours."

New shoes are sanded down to eliminate their texture and then re-shined. A power sander is used to sand down the soles of the shoes, which also are shined again.

"We shine, shine, shine and sand down the shine, get all the texture out and start shining them back up," Tilley says. "It's just a long, long process."

A somber place
Tilley tells how veterans often come and sit on the steps overlooking the tomb.

U.S. Army

Spc. John Tilley, one of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

"You can tell there's just a very somber mood about them as they watch us, and some even shed tears," he says. "We're very humbled when they come."

Unlike many soldiers, Tilley, who's 26 and single, didn't have a burning desire to be in the military. He grew up in Statesville, N.C., and graduated from Western Carolina University with a degree in history. He spent a year in a seminary before deciding to join the Army in 2006.

"I was young and fit and wanted to serve my country," he says.

Tilley was selected for the Old Guard and volunteered to be a sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

"We know we are part of something really special," he says.

He hopes one day to go to Officer Candidate School and become either an infantry officer or a helicopter pilot.

"I'm kind of itching to get in the fight overseas," he adds.

Until then, he'll continue as a sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknowns, completing his 1,000th guard walk before leaving on his next assignment in about a year.

VIDEO: Grief unites fallen soldiers' mothers

WASHINGTON – Army Sgt. Jeffrey Hardaway, 35, of Killeen, Texas, hobbled on his crutches to a microphone to say a few words after receiving a Purple Heart recently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. 

"First of all I'd like to thank my wife for putting up with me," he said to laughter and applause from a roomful of soldiers in Walter Reed's Joel Auditorium on Oct. 23.

"And second, I'd like to thank everyone here at Walter Reed for helping me ... ," he continued. "Thirdly, I'd like to, ah, what a lot of people don't know is we lost our embed reporter that day, and his name was Julio. He was from Spain, and, um ... "

At this point Hardaway lost his composure and broke down.

" ...  I'm sorry," he said moments later. "He became a close friend. I wish I could say something to his family."

VIDEO: Army Sgt. Jeffrey Hardaway became emotional about the death of reporter Julio Parrado during his Purple Heart ceremony.

Hardaway was talking about Julio Parrado, 32, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and an embedded reporter with the U.S. Third Infantry Division at the outset of the war in Iraq. He was killed on April 7, 2003, by the same missile that seriously wounded Hardaway.   

After the Purple Heart ceremony, Hardaway talked some more about his friend Julio.

"Julio was with us for months," he told me. "He was like family. We got real, real close to him. That's why it was really hard on the whole unit when he was killed."

Julio Parrado, a reporter for El Mundo, who was killed during his military embed in Iraq on April 7, 2003.

Hardaway described how Julio would send e-mails home for the American soldiers on his portable satellite computer.

"Everyone thought we were e-mailing them all through the war," he said.

But he explained Julio was really sending a mass e-mail to his newspaper's New York office, which would forward the e-mails on an individual basis to the soldiers' families. 

"So that was a blessing for all of us," he said. 

Hardaway asked me as a reporter to help him find an address for Julio's family so he could contact them. 

"I would like to write his family a letter or something, because his family wasn't there when he was killed," he said. "I was."

Julio is survived by his father, also named Julio, mother Antonia, sister Ana, brother Juan Antonio and half-sister Carmen.

I was able to get their address in Cordoba, Spain, with the help of Carlos Fresneda of El Mundo in New York and Stefano Albertini of New York University, both friends of Julio's family. Julio had been based in New York for several years and had reported extensively for El Mundo on the aftermath of the 9/11 attack.

I asked Hardaway what he wanted to tell Julio's family.

"I've been thinking about that," he said. "I just knew him temporarily, but he was a good person. I could tell that much. He was real friendly. I had been invited to go over to Spain to visit. He was just a generous, genuine person."

Julio Parrado is one of 153 journalists who've been killed in Iraq since the war began on March 19, 2003. Allied troop casualties during the same period have totaled 4,502.

WASHINGTON - Army Staff Sgt. Tara Harrilson was wounded three times in Afghanistan, the first time when she was stabbed while on a Special Forces mission in 2004.

"I was outside the wire with my team, and it was pretty much – long story, short – it was a setup, and there were a whole lot of bad men and four of us," the 27-year-old native of Gaithersburg, Md., said recently. 

Louie Palu/ZUMA Press

Army Staff Sgt. Tara Harrilson at Walter Reed Medical Center on Sept. 26.Â

"I didn't realize it until afterward, but I had been stabbed several times from different angles while trying to get out of the area," she said. "I can't go into more details than that."

Tara was wounded two more times in a series of explosions in 2005. In one of them, some body armor was blown off a hook and landed on top of her head, herniating her brain into her neck and causing a spinal cord injury. She also suffered shrapnel wounds on her arms, legs and chest in the explosions.

"I've lost a lot of vision in my left eye, hearing in the left ear," she said. "I can use my left side pretty good, just not real fine, like to grip and open a bottle, and I've lost a lot of feeling in it."

'A slow process'
Tara, who walks with a cane, is still recovering from her wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

"I think I'm doing really good for someone who just had brain surgery," she said.

She faces possibly more surgery on her brain, surgery on her spine, and a lot of physical therapy.

"It's a slow process, and it can get frustrating," she said. "Some days are better than others."

One challenge is her lengthy commute for treatment. The closest affordable housing the Army could find for Tara and her family was at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., 50 grueling miles up Interstate 270 from Walter Reed.

"It's not the distance," she said. "It's the traffic that's the killer."

Tara has to allow two and a half hours in the morning to get to Walter Reed, and it can take up to two hours to get home at night. She can't drive because of her injuries and depends on her husband or her brother to get her back and forth as often as five times a week.

"It's really hard," she said.

While she struggles to recover from her wounds, Tara and her husband are raising their three daughters, ages 2 to 7.

"Yes, all girls, and a lot of hair to do in the mornings," she said, laughing. "They've really sacrificed a lot, but they've been dealing with it real good, and they're interested in all the medical stuff that's going on with me."

Tara, who enlisted in the Army right out of high school, nine years ago, appears remarkably sanguine for someone who has trouble making ends meet on her Army paycheck and has no idea what's in her future.

"I'm getting to see my kids go to school and come home and swim in the pool, and that's a lot to be thankful for, because it could have been a lot worse," she said. 

WASHINGTON - Army Capt. Humbert "Rocky" Versace is one of 88,000 Americans still listed as missing in action since the outset of World War II, including 1,800 from the war he fought in Vietnam.

Rocky was wounded and taken captive by the Communist Vietcong on Oct. 29, 1963, in the U Minh Forest of South Vietnam. He was never repatriated.

President Bush has honored Rocky and all Americans who were prisoners of war or are still missing in action by proclaiming today National POW/MIA Recognition Day, an annual event held the third Friday in September.

Courtesy of the Versace family

Army Capt. Humbert "Rocky" Versace, seen before he became a prisoner of war in Vietnam.Â

"We will not rest until we have achieved the fullest accounting for every member of our armed forces missing in the line of duty," the president said in a proclamation released on Wednesday.

From the outset of his captivity, Rocky defied his Communist captors.

"Rocky stood toe to toe with them," fellow POW Dan Pitzer said after his own release in 1967. "He told them to go to hell in Vietnamese, French and English. He got a lot of pressure and torture, but he held his path."

Beaten, starved and shackled, Rocky refused to give in to the Vietcong.

"He was the one who set the lead for all of us in the camp," Nick Rowe, another POW, said not long after escaping in 1968. "He was a tough act to follow, but there was nobody in our camp who broke."

On Sept. 26, 1965, nearly two years into his captivity, 28-year-old Rocky Versace was taken out and executed by the Vietcong for his unrelenting defiance. His remains were never recovered.

"He was killed because duty, honor and country meant more to him than life itself," Pete Dawkins, a West Point classmate and retired brigadier general, said in a speech in 2002.

Rocky was awarded a posthumous Silver Star in 1971, but a group of friends and admirers felt he deserved better. They felt he deserved a Medal of Honor.

"Rocky Versace earned the Medal of Honor every day he got up and went on for 23 months," West Point classmate John Gurr said in an interview in 2000. "He was absolutely uncompromising."

The Army eventually agreed and awarded Rocky the military's highest honor "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty."

President Bush presented Rocky's Medal of Honor to his brother Steve at a White House ceremony on July 8, 2002.

"Rocky's story echoes across the years," the president said, "reminding us of liberty's high price, and of the noble passion that caused one good man to pay that price in full."

Steve said recently that he thinks every day about his older brother Rocky, who had planned to return to Vietnam as a Catholic Maryknoll missionary and run an orphanage he had begun as a soldier.

"That's what he really wanted to do," Steve said, "but he never got a chance."

John Rutherford is an NBC News Producer based out of the Washington, D.C., bureau and is a decorated Vietnam veteran. He also posts stories on the military at www.dailynightly.msnbc.com (click on "John Rutherford" under "categories").

 

WASHINGTON - On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, John Yates was standing less than 100 feet from where American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon.

"There was just this tremendous boom, and a ball of fire went right over my head," he remembers. "I was blown through the air and ended up probably 30 feet away. The room was instantaneously black. The smoke was down to within a foot of the floor.

AP John Yates, seen in a photo taken on Sept. 2, 2002, when he was still wearing compression garments on his arms and hands to prevent scar tissue from hardening.

"It was painful to breathe. Everything was hot," he said. "There was debris everywhere, and you had to feel with your hands to see where you were going. I eventually made my way out into the corridor.

John spent the next two and a half months in hospitals with burns over 38 percent of his body.

"Top of my head, my face, my entire back, portions of my buttocks, my left leg had second-degree burns," he said. "I had third-degree burns on my hands and my forearms and elbows, which required three skin grafting operations."

I first met John in December 2001 as he was beginning five months of outpatient therapy at Washington Hospital Center's burn clinic.

"This is the toughest part, the no-pain, no-gain portion if it," he groaned as a rehabilitation therapist worked to straighten his charred fingers.

Long road  to recovery
Nearly two years later, John was still getting a grip on life, both emotionally and physically.

"I still have a long ways to go in my psychological recovery," he told me in September 2003. "I see a therapist every week."

He'd gained only limited use of his hands by then.

"I can't make a complete fist quite yet with my right hand, but I'm further along than I am with my left," he said. "My goal is to hold change in my left hand."

Today, John's doing much better, thanks in part to the support of his wife Ellen, but he still has physical and psychological scars that will probably remain with him the rest of his life.

"I've gained a remarkable range of motion in my hands since we last spoke in 2003," he told me recently. "I can make a fist with my right hand, and I've been able to finally hold change in my left hand."

He's still being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and occasional depression.

"Even on medications, I still have ups and downs," he said. "I still have days when I'm in a bad mood, when I'm in a funk. They only last a day or so, and then I'm back to being me again."

Now 57, John continues his work as an Army civilian security manager, but from offices in Crystal City, Va., not the Pentagon. He returns to the Pentagon occasionally on business.

"I don't have a problem going back into the Pentagon anymore," he said. "The first couple of years, I did. Now it's not so difficult."

He'll be back there today for the dedication of a park in memory of the 184 Americans killed in the Pentagon attack, and then, in about a year and a half, his offices will move out of Crystal City and into the Pentagon.

"Not saying I won't have problems, you know, but I'm better prepared now to go back into the building on a permanent basis," he said. "Doesn't bother me. I can deal with it."

Even though he's convinced another 9/11-type attack is inevitable.

"I just hope we're better prepared," he said. "It's not a matter of if it will happen, but when it will happen."

Lyndon Johnson was born 100 years ago this week, on Aug. 27, 1908, and one person who's even older than that and still around to talk about it is John "Cas" Casparis, the former president's high school classmate and debating partner.

President Johnson died in 1973, but Casparis, who celebrated his 100th birthday on June 29, is still going strong and remembers teaming up with LBJ at Johnson City High School.

LBJ Library

Cas Casparis (left) and Lyndon Johnson (right), 1924

"It was back in 1924 and Lyndon and I were selected as being a debating team to represent the Johnson City High School in the Blanco County portion of the state of Texas interscholastic debate literary events," Cas said in an interview.

The subject of the debate was whether the United States should join the League of Nations, which was formed after World War I as a precursor of the United Nations. Johnson and Cas argued in the affirmative.

"We won all three decisions of the judges, and we advanced to the district in San Marcos where we got third place, being beat out by a debating team from the high school in Kyle, Texas," Cas said.

What was Johnson like?

"That's like asking how far is up," Cas replied, showing some of his old debating skills. "Be more specific."

Well, was he a nice person?

"Sure, Lyndon was a nice person," Cas said. "We're all nice people, now. Just like in the country, neighbors, if they're really good neighbors, you say their chickens roost together. Well, our chickens and Lyndon's chickens didn't roost together, but we were still good neighbors and good friends."

So you liked him?

"It depends upon what you mean by like," Cas said. "We were friends. We were schoolmates."

Cas and Johnson lost touch with each other over the years, but Cas, who lives in Austin, did look LBJ up one time.

"I never saw him as president," Cas said. "I saw him once as senator. I happened to be in Washington, and I went up to the Capitol building and saw Lyndon. The Congress was in session, and of course he was subject to being on the Senate floor, so our interview was very brief."

Did he remember you?

"Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes," Cas said.

Cas, who's retired from Western Union, where he worked as a window cashier, said LBJ followed in the political footsteps of his father, Sam Ealy Johnson.

"Now, Lyndon's father, Sam Ealy, was a member of the Texas Legislature, and he was for the poor man, the farmer and the rancher, and he served several sessions," he said. "That's where Lyndon got the idea to run."

When Johnson first started mulling a run for higher office, he approached Cas' father, who was sheriff of Blanco County.

"He saw my father and asked if my father would support him, and did my father think he had any chance?" Cas remembers. "And my father told him, 'Yes, you have a chance, and, yes, I'll vote for you.' And he did every time he ran for public office."

Did you vote for LBJ, too?

"Yes, I voted for him," Cas said. "I'm a Democrat. I pull one lever."

 

 

Jerry Beau is a national treasure, not only for his service to his country but also for his service to his fellow Marines and their families.

Beau, 89, served 24 years in the Marine Corps and has spent the last 52 years as the unpaid historian of the Marine Raiders Association, meticulously collecting service records and other information on 7,600 men who served with the elite Marine Raiders during World War II.

"We only have about 200 of the original Raiders left," he said in a recent interview.

Family photo

Marine 1st Lt. Jerome Beau, North China, 1946

Beau has filled 20 file drawers with muster rolls, discharge papers, obituaries and other documents on his fellow Raiders. His files are a gold mine of information for historians, the Raiders and their families.

A few years back, he sent Mrs. Dorothy Lockhart of Peoria, Ill., the war records of her late husband Jess, a Raider doctor in the South Pacific.

"Oh, my, he did a wonderful job," she said of Beau. "On a legal-sized piece of paper, the full front page and half of the back page, he had every place Jess was sent while he was in the Marines, every ship he was on and every landing he made. I was thrilled to death with what he did."

Beau began his own Marine career back in 1940, fresh out of Fond du Lac, Wis.

"They gave me a blanket and a railroad ticket and sent me to Parris Island, South Carolina," he said.

He volunteered when the Raiders were formed in 1942 to operate behind Japanese lines and conduct guerilla-type operations.

"We were special people, you know what I mean?" he said.

He fought with the Raiders on Guadalcanal and Bougainville, but in 1944 the Raiders were deactivated and became the 4th Marines.

"The war was expanding so much," he said, "and they didn't need us little pin-prickers anymore, you know."

Beau retired from the Marines in 1964 but continued as a Raider historian, a duty he had assumed eight years earlier.

"Interesting work," he said. "That's all I work on nowadays besides mowing the lawn and whatnot. I'm widowed so I'm living alone at the moment."

He runs his low-tech operation out of the front room of his home in Boise, Idaho.

"Do you have an e-mail address?" I ask him.

"No."

"No?"

"You know, I'm old-fashioned. I'm still kind of pencil and paper and whatnot."

"Is there a photo of you with all of your files?"

"No. The only picture I have I think is in World War II."

All of his files will one day go to the Marine Corps archives in Quantico, Va.

"Unless some other Raider wants to take it over and continue to get the historical records, you know," he said.

But how can you replace the irreplaceable?

"After 60 some years a lot of that stuff has disappeared," he said. "They can't find it and whatnot."

No, Jerry, I meant you.

www.dailynightly.msnbc.com (click on "John Rutherford" under "categories").

 

 

Aug. 14 doesn't have the ring of Dec. 7 (Pearl Harbor) or June 6 (D-Day) in the annals of World War II history, but on that summer day in 1945 Japan surrendered to the United States and its allies, ending the deadliest conflict in human history.

It's a date etched in the memories of three centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show.

"We kept the radio on," Winifred Jeeves, 100, said in a recent interview. "We didn't have television in those days. When the word came through, we were whooping it up and being so happy and relieved. You never knew what was going to happen until then."

Family photo

Win Jeeves and family, circa 1941

Three and a half years earlier, Win, her husband, their 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter had been on the last ship out of Manila before the Japanese invaded the Philippine capital in December of 1941.

"We were scared right out of our wits," she said. "We knew they were going to get into Manila because they were already in the [Philippine] islands. So we knew the next stop would be Manila, and we were on that boat out of there."

Despite the war, Win's ship made scheduled stops in Hong Kong and Honolulu on its way to San Francisco. The voyage took three harrowing weeks.

"We were very fortunate," Win said. "We got back without any unpleasant incidents."

Win and her family settled in Grosse Pointe, Mich., where they were living at war's end. Today, Win lives in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.

Bob Perkinson, also 100, was serving with the U.S. Army in Europe when Japan surrendered.

Family photo

Bob Perkinson during World War II

"I was just thankful," Bob remembers. "We got hold of some liquor and drank it, and I will say this, it was the only time in my life I've ever been drunk."

Bob had spent the war chasing Germans across Europe, and one night his unit actually drove right past them.

"It was moonlight, and we drove into a spot with German military vehicles on both sides of the road," he said. "We just had to keep moving, and I wondered when they were going to start shooting at us, but they didn't. We never saw a sign of a German. We got through all right, but if everyone's heart was where mine was, it was right in their teeth."

Bob figured the Germans had gone into a nearby house, possibly to sleep.

"But the racket we made should have woken them up, and they should have had guards out, anyway," he said. "They must have thought we were bait, that if they showed up they'd be shot at, but it sure scared us."

Bob came home to Peoria, Ill., in October of 1945, and he has lived there ever since.

Fannie Brown, 101, was serving as a Red Cross volunteer in Carteret, N.J., on Aug. 14, 1945.

"Oh, there was dancing in the street, and everyone was hollering, and we were very happy," Fannie remembers. "We were having a wonderful time."

Family photo

Fannie Brown in 1945

Fannie had spent the war knitting sweaters, rolling bandages and sending packages to the troops.

"Some of the boys said they were the best dressed men in the Army," Fannie said. "We went to the hospitals, we helped feed people, we went all over. Wherever they needed us, we went, during the blackouts and everything."

Fannie, who now lives in Las Vegas, Nev., also loved to sing songs during the war. There was one song she wasn't supposed to sing, but she sang it anyway:

"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
I wouldn't put a musket on his shoulder.
He'll kill another mother's boy."

On a personal note, my late mother wrote a description in 1945 of the war's end in Washington, D.C., for her infant sons.

"A blur of excitement - laughter and tears, back-thumping and leg of lamb on mint jelly, neighbors and martinis, and a bottle of champagne that had been hopefully put on ice days before," she wrote.

America's "Greatest Generation" not only knew how to win a war, but also how to celebrate the peace.

If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details

WASHINGTON - Patricia Angus was a senior at Rosary High School in San Diego and Chuck Scharf was a sophomore at San Diego State College when they first met through Chuck's younger sister in 1952.

"He was my steady from the very beginning, which my mother was against because she thought I should be meeting other men," Patricia said in an interview. "But I said, 'No, Mother, this is the young man I want to date.'"

Chuck and Patricia were married two years later, in 1954; he was 21 and she was 19.

"He was a sweetheart," she said, "handsome, loving, caring, just perfect."

Family photos

Chuck and Patricia Scharf, the early '60s

Fast forward to 1965. Chuck was an Air Force fighter pilot about to take off for Vietnam. Patricia was there to see him off, the pregnant wife of another pilot alongside her.

"He looked over at me, and I'm waving my scarf, and he salutes me," Patricia said. "And Donna Jewel turned and said, 'We're never going to see them again,' and I said, 'Yes, we are.' Well, guess what?"

Chuck's F4C Phantom II jet fighter was shot down over North Vietnam on Oct. 1, 1965, two weeks before he was due home.

"The doorbell rings, and I open the door, and there's the base commander," Patricia remembers. "I said, 'Chuck got shot down?' And he said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Is he dead?' And he said, 'He's missing in action.'"

Missing in action, for the next 41 years.

"I prayed very hard," Patricia said. "I had hopes that somewhere they'd find him, but they didn't, and then they found the remains."

Human remains were excavated from Chuck's crash site, but DNA tests proved inconclusive. Stymied, the Air Force turned to Patricia, and that's when she remembered Chuck's love letters, about a hundred old love letters squirreled away in a trunk in her closet.

"And they said, real quietly, they paused for a few moments, and they said, 'Could we have about 12 of the envelopes, Mrs. Scharf? We'll return them to you.' And I said, 'Sure,' and that's how it happened."

DNA from Chuck's saliva on the stamps and seals of the envelopes matched bone fragments recovered from the crash site. Chuck's love letters from 1965 helped identify his remains in 2006.

"I finally had closure," Patricia said. "It was a great relief."

Patricia flew out to Hawaii and brought Chuck's remains home for burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

"As we were landing, the flight attendant said to the passengers, 'Ladies and gentlemen, last night we picked up a very special passenger from Hawaii. His name was Colonel Charles J. Scharf. He was shot down October 1st of 1965, and he was missing in action for 41 years. We are honored to bring him back home to his native America. God bless him and God bless his family.'"

The passengers broke into applause - and some tears - and Patricia stood up to thank them.

"I said to them, 'I want to thank you for your wonderful love at this moment for my husband and me. Thank you all ever so much.' I was getting very emotional. I still do when I say that."

Patricia never remarried, never even considered it. Chuck and Patricia's only child, a daughter, had been stillborn, so Patricia has no family. Now 74 and retired, she visits Chuck every week at Arlington, where he's buried along with some of those old love letters.

"I can go anytime I want to talk to him, and I love sitting out there, and I know where he's at," she said. "He's not in the mud, not lost forever in the jungle."

John Rutherford is an NBC News Producer based out of the Washington, D.C. bureau and is a decorated Vietnam veteran. He also posts stories on the military at www.dailynightly.msnbc.com (click on "John Rutherford" under "categories").

Mary Hoffman, 101, still remembers coming to America from Russia in 1912, arriving on a ship the same week the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic.

She's one of three centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show who talked about immigrating to this country many years ago.

Family photo

Mary Hoffman arrives in America, 1912

"I was 5 years old," Mary said in a recent interview. "They knew I could sing good, and at 5 o'clock in the morning they would go through the boat with lunches and stuff like that, and they would throw me a bun or something to eat, you know, something good."

In return, Mary and her grandfather sang religious songs.

"I know I sang a lot, because whenever they wanted us to sing for 'em, we would sing," she said. "At that time, you was glad when you had something to eat, and we were awful poor, and if somebody fed you something, you appreciated it."

Mary, her parents and her grandfather settled in Michigan, but the rest of her family never made it out of Russia.

"My grandma was on the boat ready to come to America, and they wouldn't let her over here because she had sore eyes," Mary said. "They had a son that had bad eyes, too, and they wouldn't let him come, either, so they stayed home, grandma and the boy and his wife."

Mary's family was searching for a better life; Edith Tucker's family was searching for a safer one.

Edith, 100, and her mother fled Russia's Jewish pogroms in 1925. They escaped to Poland and then to Cuba in hopes of joining her two brothers in Brooklyn.

"One of my brothers was able to bring my mother into this country, but he could not bring me in," Edith said. "I was only 17 years old at the time. I was left in Cuba with a very good friend, and the only way I could get into America was if an American citizen married me and brought me in as his wife."

That's where a distant relative she had never met entered the picture. The son of Edith's mother's uncle agreed to marry Edith with the understanding they'd go their separate ways once she was here. Only, it didn't work out that way.

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Edith & Herman Tucker, 1925

"He did come to Cuba, and we got married in court," she said, "but then he went back, and he said to my brother, 'When your sister comes in, I'm going to marry her, and don't worry, I'll take good care of her.' And when I got my visa and came in, we got married."

Edith and Herman Tucker were married for 45 years until he died in 1970.

"It was a little awkward at first because I couldn't speak English, and he couldn't speak Jewish [Yiddish] very well, but somehow we understood each other, and I made sure to learn English as fast as I could," she said. "I had a wonderful life with him. We brought into this world three wonderful children."

Another centenarian forced to escape persecution against the Jews was 100-year-old Regina Picker. Regina, her husband Gustl and her parents lost their apartment and Gustl lost his job as a textile designer after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938. They feared being carted away to concentration camps.

"Each time the doorbell or the telephone rings, we hardly dare to respond, fearing the worst," her father wrote at the time.

In 1939, Regina and Gustl fled Vienna for England; her parents joined Regina's brother in New York.

"When I left Austria, it was horrible," Regina said in an interview. "But we were lucky."

In England, ironically, Regina and Gustl were sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man in 1940 because of their Austrian ancestry. They were considered enemy aliens.

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Regina & Gustl Picker, 1935

"Interesting that 80 percent of all Germans and Austrians interned were Jewish and certainly not Nazi sympathizers," Regina's niece noted in an e-mail.

Friends and neighbors took care of Regina and Gustl's house and possessions while they were interned for about six months. They were released in 1941 and came to America in 1956, where Gustl continued his life's work as a textile designer.

"We came to America where my husband got another position," Regina said. "I was happy."

If you know of a centenarian who's had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about it in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

 

WASHINGTON – Marine Sgt. Michael Strank received his citizenship papers Tuesday, 63 years after he helped raise the American flag over Mount Suribachi and was later killed in the battle of Iwo Jima.

His certificate of citizenship was presented to his sister at a brief ceremony in the shadows of the Iwo Jima Memorial overlooking the nation's capital.

USCIS

Sgt. Michael Strank, USMC.

"I am just so honored and proud to be here today to accept this citizenship in honor of my brother," Mary Pero, 75, of Pittsburgh, said.

Strank, four other Marines and a Navy corpsman are depicted on the huge bronze memorial hoisting the flag over the volcanic island on Feb. 23, 1945.

"He wouldn't have wanted the fame," Pero said after the ceremony. "He was there, and he did his job."

Michael Strank's journey to Iwo Jima began in 1919 in Jarabenia, Czechoslovakia, where he was born. He came to America at the age of 3 and grew up playing baseball and the French horn in western Pennsylvania.

"He was the oldest child in the family, and I was the youngest," Pero said. "He was very caring."

Strank automatically became a citizen when his father was naturalized in 1935, but Strank never received his citizenship papers. This oversight was only recently discovered by a gunnery sergeant assigned to a Marine security detachment in Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

"I was so overwhelmed," Pero said.

Strank had joined the Marines in 1939 and fought in some of World War II's bloodiest battles against Japan. He landed on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945, and helped raise the flag four days later.

"Those who served alongside him have said he had a way of setting them at ease, making them feel that he could help them survive the war," said Jonathan Scharfen, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On March 1, 1945, while attacking Japanese positions in northern Iwo Jima, Strank was fatally wounded by enemy artillery fire.

"When we had a memorial service, the newspaper called us, and they informed my parents that he was one of the boys that raised the flag," Pero said. "That's how we found out."

Strank was buried on Iwo Jima and later reinterred in Section 12 of Arlington National Cemetery, just a short distance from Tuesday's ceremony in his honor.