Sometimes the heroes’ graves we honor on Memorial Day are empty


Dale Garrison, brother of the late Garry Garrison, who lived for many years at Noland’s Point, near Udall, with his wife, Bonnie, was killed during the Korean War, but his remains were never found.

On Memorial Day, we honor the men and women who died in military service to America, the heroes who died in uniform, not caring what careers the rest of us chose, what color our skin was, what party we voted. They simply stepped up and swore an oath to stand between us, whoever we are, and those who would do us harm.

We think of them with gratitude, especially on Memorial Day, when many of us stand at their graves to honor the lives they lived and the death they died. But the fact is, some of those heroes’ graves are empty. 

Dale Garrison’s is one of them.

He was born July 30, 1931, in Griswold, Iowa, the second of the three sons of  Earl Kelso Garrison Sr. and Mary Ella Robinson Garrison, who had met when they both lived near Mountain Grove. After Earl and Mary Ella married, they lived for a while back in Iowa, where Earl’s family was from – and where Earl and Mary Ella’s sons Earl Kelso II and Dale were born.

By the time their third son, Garry, was born in 1935, the Garrisons were living in Springdale, Arkansas.  

Their middle son, Dale, enlisted in the Army, probably in 1949. He was deployed to Korea where, on Sept. 4, 1950, he was wounded in action. He was sent to a military hospital in Japan to recover from his wounds. If his injuries had been worse, he might have been sent back to the States or even discharged. 

Instead, he learned that he was to return to the combat zone. 

His namesake and nephew, current Norwood resident Dale Garrison, the son of the late Garry Garrison and wife Bonnie, who lived in Ozark County for many years, remembers hearing about the letter his Uncle Dale wrote home to his mother, surely causing her great distress. “He told her he’d been wounded but they were sending him back to the war,” namesake Dale said last week. “He told her, ‘Forget you ever had me, because I know I’m not coming back.’”

The family must have been alarmed and extremely worried that their loved one felt such a dark premonition. 

Then, a few weeks after Dale’s return to Korea, the family got a telegram, “one of those where they print out the message on a little ticker tape and stick it on the paper,” namesake Dale said. “It said he had been wounded again.”

Another telegram soon followed, saying he had been taken as a prisoner of war, but the Army didn’t know where, Dale said. His family was devastated.

“It was really, really hard on my grandmother,” he said. “Mothers aren’t supposed to have a favorite child, but he was hers.” 

Reeling from the heartbreaking news, Dale’s two brothers did the only thing they could think of doing. But whether their decision eased their parents’ grief is unlikely; instead, it probably worsened their fears. The Garrisons’ two surviving sons enlisted in the military themselves and volunteered for Korea, vowing to find the POW camp where their brother was being held, or find out what had happened to him.

“Dad went into the Marine Corps, and my other uncle, Earl, went into the Army. They enlisted so they could find him or his remains,” namesake Dale said, adding that his dad, Garry, was underage, only 17 at the time, and his grandparents had refused to sign the papers letting him enlist. “He talked an aunt into signing for him,” Dale said.

The two men served in Korea, but, as many might have expected, they failed to find their brother. 

Meanwhile, the family had been notified that Dale had died, but the Army also told them his remains were unaccounted for. “The military said at first he was wounded. Then they sent another deal saying he had died in a POW camp – but how they knew that, I don’t know,” Dale said. 

As the men Dale had served with came home from the war, some of his friends contacted Dale’s parents. “The guys who had been with him told Grandma they couldn’t take him with them because he was too far gone. They said his wounds were so bad, there was no way he could live through them,” Dale said. 

Years passed. On Feb. 5, 1954, the military sent the Garrison family Dale’s second Purple Heart, along with official acknowledgment that their son had been killed in action. “But they never have yet found his remains,” Dale said. 

Earl Garrison served one tour with the Army and was discharged, but Garry made a career of the Marines. For a while he served as sergeant of the guard at a Marine base in Memphis, where he sometimes escorted Elvis Presley to a bar on the base where he would occasionally sing to the guys, Dale said. Both Garry and Earl provided DNA samples to various groups who sought to find American remains in Korea, but there has never been a match.  

Earl Garrison, now 91, lives in Springdale. 

After his military retirement, Garry and Bonnie Garrison eventually moved to Noland’s Point, near Udall, where they lived several years. Garry became licensed as a fishing guide on Bull Shoals Lake. In their later years, they moved closer to their sons, Dale, in Norwood, and Melvin in Marshfield. Bonnie Garrison, 84, died Nov. 18, 2020, in Monett; Garry, 85, died April 20, 2021. Their joint obituary was published in the May 19 edition of the Times.

Their sons and other family members will gather June 19 for a graveside memorial service for Bonnie and Garry at Friendship Cemetery in Springdale. And while they’re there, they’ll visit the empty grave of Garry’s brother, Dale. 

“My grandmother bought him a headstone,” namesake Dale said. It lists the date of his death as Dec. 31, 1950, the last day of the year he disappeared.

“But he’s not there,” Dale said. “His remains are still somewhere in Korea.”

Ozark County Times

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