U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Richard Salsbury will be laid to rest next to his parents in Fairview Cemetery in Canaan on Saturday, nearly 80 years after the B-24 bomber he was in was shot down in WWII. Salsbury was just 19 years old and serving as a gunner on the aircraft on August 1, 1943 when it went down. His unidentified remains were buried in Romania. His niece, Ann Salisbury-Walker, said a few years ago the military requested a swab of her father's mouth to perform a DNA analysis on remains and it was a match. Salisbury-Walker says it's bittersweet to have her uncle finally come home because her father was Richard's only sibling and his loss was devastating.
"I am very proud of him," she said. "At the same time it's been very hard....very hard on all of us, emotionally. I think it's because he would have been very influential in our lives."
Salisbury-Walker said her father Walter always had his brother's pictures, medals of honor and wings on his bedroom wall but didn't often speak of his brother. The U-S military is executing the interment with a minister attending for the family.
