In early August, I became obsessed with the found remains of 2nd Lt. Valorie Pollard. It turned out the Defense Department's Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office had finally identified this man after he went missing in World War II nearly 70 years ago.
Pollard was a complete mystery and it just made me work that much harder. I called every Pollard in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties, searched tons of online military databases, read the obituaries of everyone with his last name in our paper archive and called just about every government agency I could think of.
Besides some very basic information, it was a dead end.
In my desperation, I filed a request with the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.
In the meantime, I tracked down Pollard's daughter and a neighbor. The result was one of the top 20 stories I've ever done. Here's the link.
A few weeks later I got my request back from the center in St. Louis. It turned out Pollard's file was burned in the now-infamous fire that torched 16 to 18 million records in 1973.
I do not plan to put many rejections for information on this blog, but I thought this one was worth a post because it is so heartbreaking. This man gave his life for the United States and when we finally find his remains, it is a lost cause because he did not have much family left.
For Pete's sake, we could never even find a photo of the guy!
Still, I think there is some good news here. 1) At least we found his daughter and were able to put together an article that can be a reference for future generations and 2) It sounds like the center has really turned things around.
No comments:
Post a Comment