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Jean Ann Kelbley recently learned the remains of her older brother, Sgt. 1st Class Dean D. Chaney, had been identified and will be arriving in Seneca County for a proper burial.
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Sergeant’s remains returned to family

THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH

Sergeant’s remains returned to family

Ohioan to be buried in Seneca Co. plot

BLOOMVILLE, Ohio — A sign on the edge of the tiny Seneca County village of Bloomville bears the words relatives of Dean Chaney thought they would never hear, “Welcome home.”

Army Sgt. 1st Class Dean D. Chaney was just 21 when he was declared missing in action in November, 1950, in North Korea. His young wife and family would later learn he had died from malnutrition while being held in a prisoner-of-war camp.

On Friday, Sergeant Chaney, whose remains were identified this fall and returned to his family Wednesday, will be buried at the cemetery with full military honors.

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“It’s something that I’ve dreamed about for 65 years. I was worried that it wouldn’t happen,” said Janice Stokes, 85, of Asheville, N.C., who was married to Sergeant Chaney for less than a year before he died a world away.

She spent years making phone calls, writing letters.

“Sometimes I would think [he would be found], and then it went on so long, and I’m getting pretty old, and I was afraid it wouldn’t happen,” she said. “Anyway, it was a nice, but sad, surprise. I’m just so glad he’s back home in Ohio.”

Mrs. Stokes, who graduated from Bloomville High School with Sergeant Chaney in 1947, said she set her sights on her tall, handsome classmate when she was just 14. He was slower to come around, she said.

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He enlisted in the Army after graduation; she went to Heidelberg College in nearby Tiffin. Three years later, they were married.

“Just before we got married, he asked me what I thought about him re-enlisting,” she recalled. “Dumbest thing I ever did, I said, ‘Yes, that’s OK,’ because I wanted to do the right thing. That was a mistake.”

His wife, his parents, and his siblings would not see him again.

Sergeant Chaney’s younger sister, Jean Ann Kelbley, who still lives in Bloomville, was in fifth grade when her brother went missing. She remembers the last letter her parents received from him in which he described how “the Chinese were overrunning the soldiers.”

Last month, Mrs. Kelbley was notified that the Department of Defense POW/​MIA Accounting Agency had positively identified her brother’s remains.

“I was just totally surprised,” Mrs. Kelbley, 76, said. “The last I’d heard they weren’t allowing the United States to get in there and get the bodies.”

Mrs. Kelbley and Mrs. Stokes received visits from Army representatives who answered their questions and delivered an inch-thick report detailing the investigation that led to the recovery and identification of Sergeant Chaney’s skeletal remains.

It told the story they’d waited decades to hear.

Sergeant Chaney, a light weapons infantryman with K Company, 3rd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, went missing in action on or about Nov. 28, 1950, during combat operations with Chinese forces near Yongsan-dong, North Pyongan Province, in North Korea, the report states. In 1953, former prisoners of war reported that Sergeant Chaney had died of malnutrition at Pyoktong Camp 5 in April, 1951.

Decades later, in 1993, North Korea turned over more than 34 boxes of remains purported to be U.S. servicemen to the Department of Defense. The remains were alleged to have come from the area near POW Camp 5.

In 2000, additional remains were recovered from a burial site in a farm field. DNA testing, with samples submitted by two of Mrs. Kelbley’s older and now deceased brothers, along with anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence confirmed that some remains from both sites were Sergeant Chaney’s.

Mrs. Kelbley read the report carefully, studied the photographs.

“There’s a lot of information in there that I didn’t know,” she said. “It’s just amazing.”

She and Mrs. Stokes said they were impressed with the amount of work, testing, and investigation that went into bringing Sergeant Chaney home.

The work goes on.

According to the POW/​MIA Accounting Agency, more than 7,800 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War. For all conflicts beginning with World War II, a staggering 83,000 Americans remain missing.

Mrs. Stokes said she is traveling to Bloomville for Friday’s service with her husband, Stanley Stokes, a Korean War veteran from Clyde. Calling her first husband’s story “tragic,” she said that she too remembers the last letter she got from him.

“He said marrying me was the best thing he had ever done,” she said. “I thought so too.”

Mrs. Kelbley said her parents and brothers would have been thrilled to know that Sergeant Chaney would be laid to rest in his hometown after all these years.

“It gives us all closure,” she said. “We know where he’s at now. We know he’s safe.”

Full military services will be conducted at 2 p.m. at Lindsey-Olds Funeral Home, 3085 State Rt. 19, Bloomville, with burial following at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bloomville.

Contact Jennifer Feehan at: jfeehan@theblade.com or 419-213-2134.

First Published November 12, 2015, 5:00 a.m.

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Jean Ann Kelbley recently learned the remains of her older brother, Sgt. 1st Class Dean D. Chaney, had been identified and will be arriving in Seneca County for a proper burial.  (THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH)  Buy Image
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