Marla Dickson Andrews
This is my father, Captain Lawrence Everett Dickson.
Narrator
His daughter Marla was just a child when he disappeared.
Andrews
My father was in the third graduating class of the original Tuskegee Airmen.
Narrator
Named for the Alabama town where they trained, the Tuskegee Airmen had to fight just to fly.
Andrews
The basic sentiment of the country at that time felt that black people were not intelligent enough, they weren't brave and courageous enough.
Narrator
The Tuskegee pilots proved their critics wrong,
but at a price
they were asked to fly 70 missions, far more than their white peers. Marla's father, was on his 68th mission in a distinctive red-tail P-51. Christmas was only days away.
Andrews
They expected him to come home very soon, because he only had two more missions to go.
Narrator
Just after the new year, they get a telegram.
Andrews
It said he was missing in action.
Narrator
He was never seen again.
Andrews
All through the years, I would ask everybody, "Did you know my father? Were you over in Italy?" And I never had any luck.
Narrator
For 50 years, Marla had little more than his medals to remember her father by...
Andrews
It's the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Narrator
...until 1998, when she got a letter from her father's wingman, Robert Martin. The letter revealed that over the mountains between Italy and Austria, her father's plane began to give him trouble.
Andrews
He saw my father having difficulty with the engine. It sputtered out one time, and he got it started again, after trying. And then it sputtered out again, and he got it started again. But the third time, it didn't work.
Narrator
Neither of the two pilots flying with Dickson saw if he got out.
Andrews
They went back, and they circled what they thought was the area. And I could tell from the letter how awful he felt.
Narrator
For almost 70 years, Dickson was gone; vanished in the mountains Until a DPAA researcher uncovered a handful of eyewitness reports recorded in 1944 Archaeologists quickly found the wreckage matching a downed P-51 fighter and fragments of bone
Andrews
I didn't know how to handle it. I know that sounds silly because I'm old enough to be able to handle almost anything.
Narrator
The remains that were found were sent to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System for analysis. The D.N.A. is extracted from bones and teeth and then sequenced.
Timothy McMahon
Which is a way for us to determine the actual base pairs. So, when I talk about D.N.A.,
D.N.A.'s made up of four base pairs
G, A, T, C.
Andrews
The army asked for my D.N.A, and they asked for my father's brother's son's D.N.A.
Narrator
The work is painstaking. Of 27 Tuskegee Airmen missing since World War II, he is the first, and so far only one, to have been recovered. In July 2018, the D.P.A.A. notified his daughter Captain Dickson had been found.
Andrews
Because he wasn't treated properly when he was alive, I'm taking him first class to Arlington. I want to take my CD of Donald Byrd, the jazz trumpeter, 'cause that is so cool. He would really, really like that, and he'd say, "Thanks, Marla. You know how to send a person off."
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