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Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Back home Remains of lost World War II airman Leo Mustonen arrived Tuesday; pastor prepares for unique service Associate Editor The remains of Leo Mustonen, the World War II airman who left Brainerd as a young man more than 60 years ago, were brought home Tuesday by a military escort.
The 22-year-old man's remains, discovered by climbers last October at the bottom of a glacier in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, had been mostly encased in ice. Mustonen, two other aviation cadets and a pilot were on board a navigational training plane that had been missing after it left a Sacramento airfield on Nov. 18, 1942. The aircraft crashed far off course in a remote section of Kings Canyon National Park.
The 1938 Washington High School graduate will be buried Friday with his parents in north Brainerd's Evergreen Cemetery following 1 p.m. funeral services at First Lutheran Church. The remains will be kept at Nelson-Doran Funeral Home until the funeral.
Pastor Andy Smith, who will preach at Friday's service, said the funeral is unique in the extensive length of time that's elapsed between the man's death and his burial. The belated discovery of Mustonen's body and the closure of a decades-long mystery has attracted media attention, including a story in People magazine this week that reported the wrong day for the funeral.
Still, Smith said his job is unchanged no matter how much publicity the service may receive.
"The mission of the service is the same and that is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ be preached very clearly and loudly," Smith said.
Preparation for the funeral has been similar to the other services he's conducted in 14 years as a minister. He said he invites the family to share thoughts of the departed that are meaningful to them. Sister Mary Ruth, who grew up as Ona Lea Mustonen and is the airman's niece, asked Smith to emphasize the Resurrection. Smith said there are other biblical themes that could be used, including the idea of being lost in the wilderness and the shepherd leaving 99 sheep to find the one who was lost.
Smith said he has read about the high-altitude location where they found Mustonen's remains and was struck by how desolate it is. He has also thought about how God remained watchful over the young man's body.
"Think about how for 63 years this person lay out there," he said.
He cited a chapter in Romans in which the Scripture emphasizes "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
From the start, Mustonen's surviving family members felt it was important for him to return to Brainerd and be buried with his parents.
"They said there was no doubt in their mind," Smith said. "They felt he was coming home."
The young man's family belonged to Messiah Lutheran Church, a Finnish-Lutheran congregation that merged with First Lutheran in the mid-1960s. His two nieces, Sister Mary Ruth and Leane Mustonen Ross, have asked that the service be hopeful and a celebration of the young airman's life.
Smith was pleased that Mustonen's niece, a Roman Catholic sister, felt comfortable making funeral arrangements with a Lutheran minister.
"There's a lot of ecumenism," he said. "We honor each other's traditions. I think that's pretty powerful."
MIKE O'ROURKE, associate editor, can be reached at mike.orourke@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5860.
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