Joseph E. Gantt was 26 years old when he was captured in North Korea.
It was November 1950, and he was fighting as a sergeant first class when he went missing in action.
Months later, already a prisoner of Chinese forces, he died inside a detention camp.
His wife, Clara, learned of his capture, but decades would pass before anyone could confirm what had really happened to him.
Clara never remarried. She kept his photographs, his memories, and a promise she made to herself: to wait for him.
Joseph’s remains arrived in the United States in 2006, but forensic analyses took seven more years to identify them with certainty.
In December 2013, at 94 years old and in a wheelchair, Clara went to Los Angeles airport to receive the flag-draped coffin.
She stood up to see it arrive. “He was my husband, and I was still his wife”, she said.
Barack Obama told her story months later, in his 2014 Memorial Day speech.