Family wanted him buried close, at Sampson Veterans Cemetery
A military honor guard welcomes the remains of Korean War victim Elmer Kidd, of Seneca Falls
/ Photojournalist Craig McDowelll
SYRACUSE -- At Syracuse's Hancock Airport Tuesday, honors were given for a Seneca Falls man killed in action in Korea in 1950.
Elmer Kidd's remains were recently identified. On Tuesday he received a homecoming that will end with burial at Sampson Veterans Cemetery on Friday.
An army honor guard, in full dress uniform, was part of a planeside service as the casket was lowered from a Delta flight.Kidd's sister Alberta Stuck was at the airport, along with her daughter and son. Larry Stuck never knew his uncle, but was overcome with emotion, saying that the homecoming was closure for his mother.
Corporal Kidd was 26 when he died in November, 1950 in the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. The army declared him Killed in Action in October 1954, but his remains, in boxes turned over by North Korea in December, 1993, were never identified until recently, with DNA tests. The family decided to have him buried at the Veterans Cemetery in Romulus, rather than at Arlington so that his sister, now 80, could be close.
As the funeral procession left the airport, Patriot Riders set up a flag line and also provided a motorcycle escort to Seneca Falls.
