View full sizeHilda "Marie" Hewitt-Fromherz, right, mother of Marine Staff Sgt. Samuel Hewitt, and her daughter Paula Banks, both of Medina, learned that the Marine's remains will be coming to Ohio next month for burial, 44 years after he was reported missing in action in Vietnam. The mother and daughter are standing behind a Purple Heart medal and a penciled etching from the Vietnam War Memorial Wall.MEDINA, Ohio -- Samuel Hewitt grew up in the Indiana heartland of corn and soybeans, lettered in high school sports, gave his girl a pearl engagement ring, then went off to war and never came back.
Soon, this Marine who has been missing in action in Vietnam since 1966 will finally return to be buried in an Ohio heartland of fallen veterans.
Hewitt's remains were discovered in June and identified this month through dental records. His mother and sister, who now live in Medina, plan to have him buried at the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery in Rittman on Nov. 19.
For 44 years, Hilda "Marie" Hewitt-Fromherz, 87, has run a ragged emotional gantlet concerning the fate of her only son, who disappeared at age 19.
Her initial hopes that perhaps he'd been captured eventually gave way to a pendulum of optimism and depression, always wondering, the question unanswered.
"I think as long as you don't know, you have a glimmer of hope," she said. "So now we know. This is the end.
"I prayed many times that this would be resolved in my lifetime," she added. "So in a sense, this is like an answer to my prayers."
The answer doesn't ease the loss. And when she remembers, her thoughts are of a son, not a Marine.
She shook her head, closed her eyes, carefully choosing her words. "I don't want him being a hero in the war. That is not how I want him remembered," she said. "I want him to be remembered for who he was."
Which was an "outgoing, happy-go-lucky kind of boy, but very serious and respectful," she said.
The kind of kid who'd earn a little extra money by cutting the grass and shoveling the snow for retirees living in rural community of Koontz Lake, Ind., not far from South Bend. A youth who once jumped off a school bus to help a stranded woman change a flat tire. Who'd become the man of the house whenever his father, Eugene Hewitt, a mechanical engineer who is now deceased, left on business trips.
View full sizeU.S. Marine Samuel E. Hewitt, right, poses with his family after his graduation from boot camp in 1965. From left are his father, Eugene E. Hewitt; sister, Paula; and mother, Marie."An imp," his sister, Paula Banks, 67, recalled of her brother. "He was fun, he was kind and really considerate of other people. But he had a good streak of imp in him, too."
Banks said he competed on his high school's basketball and track team and was thinking about becoming either a construction engineer or a farmer like his girlfriend's father.
Then one day a Marine recruiter spoke at the high school, and Hewitt signed on, to the consternation of his mother. She'd lived through World War II, when her brother was injured in the Navy, and knew the human cost of combat.
"I don't think he had a clue as to what he was really getting into," she said. "But when you're 18, you're pretty sure of yourself. He felt like he was doing an honorable thing."
On his last visit home after basic training, where he was ranked an expert marksman, Hewitt gave his girlfriend an engagement ring.
Later, in letters from Vietnam where he was serving outside Da Nang with the 3rd Battalion of the 9th Division Marines, assigned to night patrols and scouting missions, he wrote about the heat, the food, and how "he felt like he was doing a good thing by being there," his mother recalled.
"Worried? I was scared to death," she added.
His last letter arrived the day he was reported missing in action.
Both his mother and sister said the military told them little about his disappearance, but asked that they not talk to others about it -- prompting his sister to wonder if Hewitt had been on some kind of secret mission.
The family drifted in limbo. They wrote to senators and congressmen. To officials of countries that had diplomatic ties to North Vietnam. Trying to find out if Hewitt was a POW.
View full sizeSamuel Hewitt as a student at Oregon-Davis High School in Grovertown, Ind.Hewitt's dog Cindy, who always ran to his bed for shelter during a storm, stood vigil in his bedroom. Waiting, too, for an answer.
"Sometimes you got very hopeful and sometimes you got very depressed," his mother said. Holidays were the worst. "Sam couldn't wait to get into that turkey on Thanksgiving," she recalled.
Come 1973 and the end of the war and return of American POWs back home, the Hewitts' hopes crashed.
"The hardest part is giving up your children," said Hewitt-Fromherz, whose son was officially declared killed in action in 1975. A memorial service was held at the Koontz Lake Missionary Church.
But the wondering continued until three weeks ago, when the family was contacted by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command with news that Staff Sgt. Samuel Hewitt's remains had been found and identified.
A full report given to the Medina women on Wednesday showed that based on Vietnamese accounts of an American soldier buried in a certain area near Da Nang, search teams visited the site nine times, from 1992 to 2010, before finding the remains.
"I was just totally stunned," Paula Banks said. She had asked officials if the remains were intact. Assured that they were, and that her brother evidently died from a gunshot, she said, "That was a great relief. I'd always wondered if he'd been brutalized or horribly treated."
Word of the discovery quickly spread to Indiana, where Patty (Norman) Norwick, 63, one of Hewitt's 47 classmates in Oregon-Davis High School's Class of 1965, said the news came as a shock. "But also kind of a blessing, knowing the family can finally have closure," she added. "I can't imagine what they've been through over these years."
She also remembered Hewitt as a "fun-loving, likable guy who really liked to give the teachers fits." Norwick said she was a good friend of Hewitt's fianc e, who later married someone else after he was reported missing in action.
News of his loss was horrible, she said, and "we all often wondered whatever happened to Sam."
Norwick is contacting as many of her former classmates as possible, to attend a memorial service for Hewitt at their old high school on Veterans Day, Nov. 11.
Eight days later the Marine will be laid to rest in Ohio with full military honors. Waite & Son Funeral Home in Medina will handle arrangements.
To his mother, the 44-year question has finally been answered. All that remains is "the hardest thing a mother has to do -- bury her children," she said.
"At least now I can put flowers on his grave."
There are 1,740 Americans still missing from the war in Vietnam.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: balbrecht@plaind.com, 216-999-4853