OREGON, Ohio — Thursday's processional details for a recently identified World War II airman returning home to Oregon to be laid to rest have been announced.
Staff Sgt. Jack Coy was killed on Feb. 24, 1944, when the plane he was on was shot down in Germany.
Nearly 80 years later on Feb. 12, 2024, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency) announced Coy had been identified using mitochondrial DNA analysis. The DNA was provided by his niece and her daughter, Shawnelle Johns, of Oregon.
The community is encouraged to pay its respects to Coy by lining Navarre Avenue on Thursday around 6:45 p.m. as the caravan heads to the Eggleston Meinert & Pavley Funeral Home on Coy Road. The funeral home estimates the caravan will arrive in Oregon around 7:15 p.m.
Johns said the family is encouraging all community members to pay respects to Coy at multiple events on Memorial Day weekend.
There will be a visitation in the Clay High School gymnasium on Saturday from 1-3 p.m., with a service at 3 p.m.
Coy will be laid to rest with full military honors at Willow Cemetery in Oregon on Sunday at noon. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur will speak at this event, Coy's family told WTOL 11.
A special memorial service will be held to honor all local fallen heroes at Clay Memorial Stadium on Memorial Day at 11 a.m.
Johns said there are also discussions about a processional from the funeral home on Sunday to Willow Cemetery, but those are not yet finalized.
The American Graves Registration Command in 1952 retrieved Coy's remains from a German cemetery he had been buried in and moved them to a cemetery in Belgium.
Eventually, the remains were brought to an American lab in 2021 and matched to the mitochondrial DNA provided by Johns and her mother, then separated from the other two servicemembers with whom he was originally interred.