EXETER, Calif. – On a recent Friday morning, the American flag swayed over the Exeter Cemetery as the Exeter Union High School band played wartime songs like America the Beautiful.
Hundreds of local residents, military service members and veterans were gathered to say goodbye to a fallen airman.
Sgt. Adolph Aguirre had a funeral with full military honors that included a motorcycle escort, gun salute and airplane flyover.
Sgt. Aguirre wasn't lost in a recent war.
He died in 1943.
But his remains had been missing for over 80 years – until now.
“It’s basically the end of this chapter that we know he's no longer missing,” Juan Aguirre, a cousin of the sergeant, said.
Sgt. Aguirre was known by his family by his nickname “Chicho.” He was a World War II U.S. Army Air Force pilot.
He grew up in Exeter, the son of Mexican immigrants from Guanajuato. His parents wanted to keep him safe from the war by sending him to live in Mexico, but in 1942 Sgt. Aguirre enlisted in the air force after graduating high school.
He made the announcement that he was enlisting while working in the orange groves around Exeter.
Just a year later, Sgt. Aguirre’s plane was shot down during a mission over Italy. His body was never recovered. He was only 21.
“Maria, his mother, suffered because she just never got that closure,” Juan Aguirre said.
The only thing left after all this time was a black and white photo of Sgt Aguirre wearing his aviator gear.
“My father [Sgt. Aguirre’s first cousin] carried that with him wherever he went,” Juan Aguirre said.
Stories from Juan Aguirre’s father pushed him to seek out information that eventually led to the funeral service in Exeter. It started 20 years ago, when Juan Aguirre got in touch with the Department of Defense.
“My father became very ill, and I guess subconsciously I was afraid that his stories were going to vanish,” he said.
In 2019 the Department of Defense reopened Sgt. Aguirre’s case and in 2022 exhumed WWII remains from an American cemetery in Italy.
But the agency needed help identifying the remains. Officials asked Juan Aguirre to provide samples from living family members to start their search.
Carrie Brown, supervisory forensic anthropologist with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, worked on Sgt. Aguirre’s case.
She explained that her office often encounters human remains in various conditions.
“It can be anything from a single tooth or a single bone fragment all the way up to remains that still have soft tissue,” Brown said. “The degree of fragmentation really depends on what type of case we're looking at. So in this case, it's an aircraft crash. So there's a lot more smaller pieces of bone in aircraft and tank incidents.”
Brown said her office identifies around 200 missing people each year.
“Of the over 80,000 missing, we believe about half of those are actually recoverable, and then we don't know the percentage that's identifiable,” she said.
When there is a match, especially through a family member, Brown says those are her favorite moments.
“I get really excited at that initial match,” she said.
And in May, Sgt. Aguirre’s remains were officially matched. He was flown to Fresno on Sept. 11 with a homecoming procession.
Historian Dwight Miller was at the procession and the funeral events. He has studied Sgt. Aguirre’s case and said the airman was extremely talented, especially in sports.
For example, he said Sgt. Aguirre was the ping pong champion at their high school.
“He'd never touched a badminton racket, and he grabs one, and all of a sudden he's the best guy in the building,” Miller, who also works for the Center for Art Culture and History museum in Exeter, said. “He was just a gifted, gifted guy.”
Sgt. Aguirre’s story has inspired generations of people – many of whom showed up to his farewell ceremony.
Lori Faulkner, of Exeter, also attended the funeral and the procession with her family. Her 22-year-old daughter was emotional.
“She thought this was the coolest thing she'd ever done. So it was it was very touching for her, as she had some misty eyes going, and I think most people did,” she said.
Faulkner didn’t know Sgt. Aguirre, but she said that as long as she could remember, a picture of him hung in Exeter’s Veterans Memorial Building.
“When you live in a small community like this, it doesn't matter who it is. It's like part of your family,” she said.
Another of Sgt. Aguirre’s cousins, Jose Luiz Aguirre, drove to the funeral procession from Sacramento. He said stories of Sgt. Aguirre motivated him to join the Marine Corps.
Today, he wears a WWII veteran pin with a ribbon that says “proud family.”
And the Aguirre family is indeed proud: more than 50 family members from across California came for the services, even though none of them currently live in Exeter.
“This means so much not only to myself, to my children, but my entire family, along with the Exeter community that has been so supportive,” Jose Luiz Aguirre said.
Sgt. Aguirre is now buried in the same cemetery as his parents. He was buried with his mother.
A few steps away, a sign staked above his father’s grave says, “welcome home son.”
