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Friday, March 24, 2006
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Baxter woman recalls Leo's mother's grief
Senior Reporter BAXTER - As Marjorie Freeman sat in her Arbor Glenn apartment in Baxter reading the newspaper last fall, a story struck her so hard the paper dropped from her hands to the floor.
"I just knew it was Leo," she said.
Now Freeman has a thick envelope of clippings from across the country. She has been amazed at the attention and flood of phone calls since Brainerd native Leo Mustonen was positively identified. Mustonen died in a 1942 plane crash. Climbers discovered the frozen airman last fall and the military worked to determine his identity.
"He was intelligent, quiet, reserved. He wanted a career, he wanted to become somebody that amounted to something rather than just the average working person and that was his goal," Freeman said of Leo.
Freeman lived in the middle-class southeast Brainerd neighborhood largely populated by people with Finnish ties. While her husband was in the South Pacific during World War II, Freeman lived with her mother-in-law, who was a close friend with Leo's mother, Anna Mustonen.
Freeman said she knew Leo, who was about three years her senior, but not well. She really came to know him through his mother's grief. Freeman saw Anna Mustonen regularly and remembers her with great fondness. With Leo's return to Brainerd to be buried with his mother, Freeman said she is most thankful for the woman she called "Grandma Mustonen."
"After Leo was lost and they had been notified that the plane had crashed she came almost every day over to my mother-in-law's and would sit across the kitchen table," Freeman said. "I can see them just plain as day yet."
Anna Mustonen's grief was deep, Freeman said.
"They'd be talking away in Finn, of course, and then all of a sudden she'd start crying." Freeman said of Anna Mustonen. Then the words would come in a combination of English and Finnish. Freeman recalled Mrs. Mustonen missing her son and saying it would be so much better if only they could find him.
"It was always on her mind," Freeman said. "It was very sad, very sad to just watch her and to look at her you could just see her demeanor was sad, so sad. ... She really grieved. I don't know that I've known anyone who grieved like she did. Leo was her baby. It'd be bad enough not to have him brought back - but not know where or how he died."
Freeman remembered Anna Mustonen's white aprons and erect, reserved demeanor.
"Oh she was a sweet lady and so kind and so ready to give a helping hand," Freeman said.
Freeman said she can imagine how happy Anna Mustonen would have been to have her son returned to her - a quiet thankfulness.
"I'm just sure she would have wanted him right there in the family plot," Freeman said. "She'd be very happy now to know he's home and resting by her side at the cemetery. It's a good finish for the Finnish people."
RENEE RICHARDSON can be reached at renee.richardson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5852.
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