A Burlingame family has been waiting for this day for more than five decades. Ernie De Soto’s remains returned back home with his wife and three adult children at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) Thursday.
Ernie De Soto’s casket, draped in a United States flag, arrived 54 years after he disappeared during the Vietnam War. He was a U.S. Air Force fighter.
Ernie’s entire family and dozens of friends were there to greet him, ending a half century of searching and fighting back feelings of hopelessness that this day would never come.
But Ernie’s widow Joyce Desoto, 90, was his sweetheart since high school in San Francisco and she refused to give up.
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“I went to President Nixon. I went to Kennedy, and they just told us to 'Go home. Don't pay attention. We’re taking care of it. You’re going to make it worse.' Well, we didn’t go home. We just kept fighting,” she said.
Joyce and Ernie De Soto were married and had three children at home, in the spring of 1969, when the family heard the news that Ernie had disappeared and rescue efforts failed.
“Why, why 54 years?” Joyce said. “Why couldn’t they have found him? I thought he was tortured and I thought he was a prisoner.”
Until recently, Ernie was one of more than 81,000 servicemen and women who were unaccounted for and missing in all U.S. conflicts since the start of World War II.
“After a while, you get on with your life. Never thinking you’re going to get the answers. But we’re very happy we have answers now,” Craig De Soto, Ernie’s son.
Craig was only 8 years old when his dad went missing. His sister Denise was just 2 years old and their brother Brad was 11.
They will never forget hearing the knock at the door followed by the news that their dad’s jet fighter had gone down and he was missing in action.
“I remember standing by the front door and I just collapsed. And cried and I knew what it all meant,” Brad said.
But thanks to DNA science, part of Ernie’s remains were identified and he returned home to his loving family.
“I thought for sure I would be dead,” Joyce said. “I didn’t know I’d have to wait until I was 90 to go through this.”
The family also recently learned Ernie died in his aircraft when it crashed, and that he didn’t suffer nor was he captured and tortured.
A sense of closure now for the entire family as Ernie’s remains come home and they all share an emotional moment together.
On Friday, the family will say goodbye to Ernie in a funeral at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. It will include a military flyover fit for a returning hero.
