[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 102 (Wednesday, July 24, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1343-E1344]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


       A TRIBUTE TO STANLEY ``MIKE'' LARSON: FINALLY COMING HOME

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DONALD A. MANZULLO

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 23, 2002

  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, fifty-seven years after he died on 
December 16, 1944 in the Battle of the Bulge, Stanley Larson finally 
received the funeral reserved for heroes.
  He was just a 19-year-old kid, one year out of high school, looking 
forward to the same things all kids want: lasting friendships, a good 
job, a loving family. War has a tendency to permanently interrupt 
dreams of young men. One such was Stanley Larson of Rochelle, a 
resident of the same county where I live.
  I had the opportunity to present an American flag to Stanley's 
family, the least I could do on behalf of a grateful America.

[[Page E1344]]

  The enclosed story from the Rockford Register Star, July 23, 2002, 
tells his remarkable story:

            Belgians Make Trip for Soldier's Hometown Burial

                           (By Gale Worland)

       Rochelle.--Jean-Louis Seel had always thought of Stanley E. 
     Larson, and the other American soldiers whose remains he had 
     recovered, as a soldier.
       But at Rochelle United Methodist Church, as a young boy 
     rounded a corner, Seel made the connection: Stanley the young 
     boy. Stanley the teenager.
       Here was his hometown, his past. Stanley, the high school 
     basketball star. The fresh-faced boy who had a kind word for 
     everyone. The young gentleman in glasses whose keen 
     personality and confident smarts had made him student council 
     president his senior year.
       Monday was a day of strange contrasts for the Larson 
     family, who laid to rest one of its oldest members, who was 
     also one of the youngest: Pfc. Stanley E. ``Mike'' Larson, 
     struck down by enemy fire at the age of 19 in a war that most 
     of the people at his funeral were much too young to have 
     seen.
       After being buried in a common grave for 57 years not far 
     from where he fell on Dec. 16, 1944, during the Battle of the 
     Bulge, Larson's remains were discovered last summer deep in 
     the Monschau Forest by a group of Belgian ``diggers''--four 
     men, including Seel, who have taken on the recovery of 
     American MIAs as a personal mission.
       They had traveled from another hemisphere to see Stanley 
     come back to his hometown, a Midwestern crossroads ringed by 
     tassle-headed cornfields and shingled red barns.
       And now they stood in the oppressive summer heat to say 
     farewell to a young man killed on a historic, bitter winter's 
     day. About 200 people gathered alongside them at Stanley's 
     gravesite, including the great-grandnieces and great-
     grandnephews he never knew but who, today, tenderly walked to 
     his silver casket and left a handful of red poppies.
       Stanley's father, Elmer, had bought that plot for his 
     youngest son nearly half a century ago. Now 16 members of VFW 
     posts from throughout northern Illinois saluted their fallen 
     comrade with a color guard. Seven white-gloved men and women 
     sent by the U.S. Army from Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri 
     raised their rifles and sounded the crack of three volleys 
     for one of America's 58,000 World War II MIAs who had finally 
     come home.
       And as a bugler played taps, a train whistle in the 
     distance blew in an uncanny, solemn harmony.
       ``These people are here today to give the family final 
     closure,'' said Kenneth Seay of Loves Park VFW Post 9759. 
     Seay, the POW/MIA director for the state, held the POW/MIA 
     flag in the formal color guard at the gravesite. On his wrist 
     he wears a thick band engraved with the names of the 98 
     Vietnam POW/MIAs from Illinois.
       ``With everything that's gone on in the past year, we 
     really need to pay respect to those who've gone before,'' 
     said Sen. Brad Burzynski, R-Clare, who attended the funeral.
       ``I believe God was with Stanley and his buddies when that 
     barrage of hot steel came down upon them,'' said the Rev. 
     Brian Channel, a military history buff who gave the sermon 
     during the church funeral preceding Stanley's burial with 
     military honors. ``Stanley's journey ends today after half a 
     century.''
       The casket lay in the church draped with a U.S. flag--just 
     as it had at a similar ceremony months ago in a village 
     church near where Stanley's body was found. Close to 2,000 
     people, many of them Belgians wanting to show gratitude to 
     the American troops who helped secure their liberty, attended 
     that day.
       On Monday, the flag of Belgium, with its bold vertical 
     stripes in black, gold and red, flanked the altar along with 
     the Stars and Stripes. Belgian ``digger'' Jean Philippe 
     Speder told the congregation how, when he was a teenager, 
     he'd heard his grandparents talk about the war. But later he 
     realized that those memories were dimming among his peers. 
     ``The picture of the GI was fading as a new generation, 
     including mine, grew up,'' he said. Speder painted the woods 
     where Stanley lay for 57 years as a place of ``serene and 
     magnificent deep forest, known for its high marshes and 
     spring waters.'' More MIAs lie in unknown pockets of those 
     woods. ``Those boys will always be home,'' he said, ``and 
     live in our hearts forever.''
       The friends and family who spoke at the funeral unraveled 
     the compelling tale of how Stanley was searched for and 
     found. In few words, Battle of the Bulge veteran Roger 
     Foehringer reminded all why they had come: ``He's the real 
     hero. He gave his life, his life for us.''
       ``Home is where I belong,'' Foehringer said, speaking for 
     Stanley, ``Goodbye, friends.''

     

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