From HuckFunn: Welcome home, Pfc Saini, and thank you for your sacrifice. Thanks to Buster the black lab for the find, who helped find so many people.
“I can’t believe this,” Healdsburg grape grower John Saini thought aloud at midday Friday from the backseat of a limousine as it rolled beneath the second or third Highway 101 overpass bearing emergency vehicles, first responders who stood in salute and civilians who held American flags.
The Cadillac carrying Saini and his sister, Liz McDowell, closely followed a formation of police and private motorcycles, a van-load of U.S. Marines and a silver hearse.
Inside the hearse was the casket containing the remains of the siblings’ uncle, the Marine who died in a nightmarish World War II battle and for more than 70 years lay in a lost grave on a miserable speck of an island in the central Pacific.
The 65-year-old John Saini riding in the limo was named for Pfc. John Saini, who was just 20 when he perished Nov. 20, 1943, the first day of the strategically successful but historically catastrophic Battle of Tawara.
The Marine’s niece and his namesake nephew and the other 15 members of their family who escorted his remains home from San Francisco International Airport welled up at the sight of all the well-wishers who waited for the motorcade from above or along the highway and from outside the day’s destination, the Eggen & Lance Chapel near Santa Rosa Junior College.
Niece McDowell, 62, remains heartsick that Pfc. Saini’s Italian immigrant parents and also his brother and sister didn’t live to witness the good-humored young warrior’s return for the proper burial that will happen at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Healdsburg’s Oak Mound Cemetery.
But McDowell couldn’t be more grateful to the many professionals and volunteers — and one diligent dog that didn’t live long enough to be part of Friday’s homecoming — whose efforts will allow the family to at last lay him to rest.
Pfc. John Saini
Buster
