104-Year-Old Woman's Brother Died In WWII. Over 80 Years Later, She Gets A Piece Of Him Back

In 1941, just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dorothy Stewart's brother Bernard Parnell enlisted in the Navy Reserve. He joined the likes of Betty White during World War II to support the U.S. war effort. Parnell was a good-looking man and, as Stewart told CBS News Boston in September 2026, "The girls used to chase him all of the time." Sadly, like so many young men during World War II, Parnell's life was cut short when his plane went down off the coast of Key West on May 17, 1943. 

According to an article from the time in The Charlotte Observer, shared by The Beverly Beat, the bomber plane was having mechanical issues when things went from bad to worse. The plane's co-pilot, Lieutenant James Digh, believed, " ... when we plunged downward the plane screwed around and the right wing tip hit the water before the plane's nose." After passing out a couple times, Lt. Digh found himself alone on a life raft, covered in cuts and burns. Everyone else was dead, and most of the bodies were never recovered, such as Parnell's.

Stewart married and moved to Beverly, Massachusetts, but the pain of losing her brother never left her. Then, 83 years later, Stewart, still going strong at 104, was presented with Parnell's dog tags by members of the Beverly Veterans Advisory Council. Stewart couldn't believe it, telling CBS, "I broke down and cried. I just held it after I kissed it. Who would have dreamed after all of this time?" She further elaborated on how emotional it was to The Beverly Beat, adding, "I just think the Lord wanted me to have them. It's so meaningful for me to have them, especially before I go."

Dorothy Stewart played just about every sport imaginable growing up in Arlington, Virginia. Her love for sports continued as she got older, and she became something of a local celebrity in Beverly when, at 95, she won an indoor rowing competition at the YMCA. Paul Leighton, who runs The Beverly Beat, wrote about Stewart at the time, and almost a decade later, that story helped Beverly Veterans' Services Assistant Director Ken McKay close a case he had been investigating for years. 

McKay was going through records that went back as far as the end of the 19th century when he found Bernard Parnell's dog tags. He kept the tags in his office and tried to find any information he could about Parnell when he had time. After years of coming up empty, McKay learned that Parnell had a memorial plot at Arlington Cemetery, placed at the request of his sister. Now armed with Stewart's name, McKay dug further and, thanks to Leighton's article, found out that Stewart lived in Beverly. 

McKay quickly worked to track Stewart down, telling CBS News Boston, "With that, I called the YMCA, and explained who I am. They thought I was a scammer at first." Once they believed him, McKay reunited Stewart with something that belonged to her brother. How the dog tags ended up in files that also reference the Spanish-American War in the Beverly Veterans' Services office is still anyone's guess. As McKay told The Beverly Beat, "Maybe that is a mystery that isn't going to be solved."