* He lived only 21 years.
* His only notable deed: Surviving the Bataan Death March, only to die soon after.
* The U.S. military is not entirely sure where he is buried. The American service members who died by the thousands in the Japanese concentration camps were dumped by their Japanese Army captors a dozen at a time in mass graves.
* In 69 years since then, nearly every person who cared about Lloyd has died.
* His brother, Ray, was only 6 when Lloyd left home; Ray barely remembers him.
Those are the facts.
They seem to dictate that a long-ago Army Air Corps serviceman who died from inattention in 1942 should be forgotten from inattention, too.
But the fact is, facts matter, but people matter more; which is why an elderly and health-challenged Ray Bruntmyer plans to come all the way from Arlington, Texas, to the Hyatt Regency Wichita today.
He wants to find a way to find his brother's remains, and bring Lloyd home.
At the Hyatt Regency Wichita today, the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel office plans to meet, privately, with more than 100 families who want help locating family remains from every war America has fought during the past century. The meetings are with families only, and are designed to protect their privacy.
Among the people they will meet will be Ray Bruntmyer, a 79-year-old survivor of recent bypass surgery and a staph infection, along with his wife, Sandra, who recently suffered a serious illness and a head injury from a fall. He plans to bring a few pieces of paper, documents that he and a friend and fellow Texan named John Eakin have found with their own research; the papers might help pinpoint which grave in Manila that Lloyd Bruntmyer might have ended up buried in.
"John and I are kind of troublemakers," Ray said.
"I'm not even sure why we're doing this," Ray said with a little laugh the other day, on the phone from his Texas home.
But then he began to tell a story, and the details in that story paint a faint but discernible picture, not of a fact but of a person.
"Lloyd was a good-looking guy," Ray said. "Six feet tall, 168 pounds. He joined the Army in 1940. Our whole family was military."
One of their other brothers, Harry, fought in the battle of the Bulge. Two brothers served in the Korean War.
Lloyd was serving with the Army Air Corps at Clark Field near Manila when World War II began for the United States on December 7, 1941. Clark Field, which is across the International Dateline, was attacked by the Japanese just hours after Pearl Harbor.
After that, the invading Japanese Army drove the Americans and their Filipino allies down the Bataan peninsula, then trapped and overwhelmed them.
More than 70,000 American and Filipino troops were force-marched along roads to prison camps during the Bataan Death March. Thousands died or were executed. It was one of the more notorious human atrocities of the war, and inspired tens of thousands of American youngsters to enlist in the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Corps.
Lloyd survived the march.
The family got one censored letter from Lloyd from the prison camp, with a lot of words scratched out by Japanese censors. But even with all the scratched out words, a tiny flicker of humor emerged. He said that they fed them "fish and rice for breakfast, and rice and fish for dinner."
But the fact was, they didn't feed them enough, didn't give them water, or if there was water, it was filthy and dangerous. Thousands of men died, from malnutrition, dysentery and other diseases. There was no medical treatment.
And after that one letter, there was no further word from Lloyd. When World War II ended, no one knew what had happened.
In April 1946, the Bruntmyer family in Iowa finally got a letter from an officer of the U.S. Army.
"Permit me to extend to you my heartfelt sympathy for the loss of your son, Private First Class Lloyd R. Bruntmyer, 19048974, Air Corps, who died on the 1st of November, 1942, from inattention at Cabanatuan Camp, Philippine Islands, while a prisoner of war of the Japanese," he wrote.
That was all.
Ray Bruntmyer and family history researchers like Eakin have since found more information about the dead, information Ray plans to bring with him to Wichita.
He knows that bodies of the newly dead were dumped a dozen at a time into holes dug outside Cabanatuan. Eakin found much of this; he was searching for his dead cousin, and helped Ray search for his brother.
Later, a lot of the bodies were dug up and reburied near Manila.
The Japanese kept some records; the U.S. military tried to compile more. There were some attempts to report who was in those graves, but not enough for the military to positively identify a lot of them.
And so the war ended with a lot of mysteries for a lot of grieving families.
Ray hopes maybe he can begin solving one of them in Wichita this weekend.
* His only notable deed: Surviving the Bataan Death March, only to die soon after.
* The U.S. military is not entirely sure where he is buried. The American service members who died by the thousands in the Japanese concentration camps were dumped by their Japanese Army captors a dozen at a time in mass graves.
* In 69 years since then, nearly every person who cared about Lloyd has died.
* His brother, Ray, was only 6 when Lloyd left home; Ray barely remembers him.
Those are the facts.
They seem to dictate that a long-ago Army Air Corps serviceman who died from inattention in 1942 should be forgotten from inattention, too.
But the fact is, facts matter, but people matter more; which is why an elderly and health-challenged Ray Bruntmyer plans to come all the way from Arlington, Texas, to the Hyatt Regency Wichita today.
He wants to find a way to find his brother's remains, and bring Lloyd home.
At the Hyatt Regency Wichita today, the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel office plans to meet, privately, with more than 100 families who want help locating family remains from every war America has fought during the past century. The meetings are with families only, and are designed to protect their privacy.
Among the people they will meet will be Ray Bruntmyer, a 79-year-old survivor of recent bypass surgery and a staph infection, along with his wife, Sandra, who recently suffered a serious illness and a head injury from a fall. He plans to bring a few pieces of paper, documents that he and a friend and fellow Texan named John Eakin have found with their own research; the papers might help pinpoint which grave in Manila that Lloyd Bruntmyer might have ended up buried in.
"John and I are kind of troublemakers," Ray said.
"I'm not even sure why we're doing this," Ray said with a little laugh the other day, on the phone from his Texas home.
But then he began to tell a story, and the details in that story paint a faint but discernible picture, not of a fact but of a person.
"Lloyd was a good-looking guy," Ray said. "Six feet tall, 168 pounds. He joined the Army in 1940. Our whole family was military."
One of their other brothers, Harry, fought in the battle of the Bulge. Two brothers served in the Korean War.
Lloyd was serving with the Army Air Corps at Clark Field near Manila when World War II began for the United States on December 7, 1941. Clark Field, which is across the International Dateline, was attacked by the Japanese just hours after Pearl Harbor.
After that, the invading Japanese Army drove the Americans and their Filipino allies down the Bataan peninsula, then trapped and overwhelmed them.
More than 70,000 American and Filipino troops were force-marched along roads to prison camps during the Bataan Death March. Thousands died or were executed. It was one of the more notorious human atrocities of the war, and inspired tens of thousands of American youngsters to enlist in the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Corps.
Lloyd survived the march.
The family got one censored letter from Lloyd from the prison camp, with a lot of words scratched out by Japanese censors. But even with all the scratched out words, a tiny flicker of humor emerged. He said that they fed them "fish and rice for breakfast, and rice and fish for dinner."
But the fact was, they didn't feed them enough, didn't give them water, or if there was water, it was filthy and dangerous. Thousands of men died, from malnutrition, dysentery and other diseases. There was no medical treatment.
And after that one letter, there was no further word from Lloyd. When World War II ended, no one knew what had happened.
In April 1946, the Bruntmyer family in Iowa finally got a letter from an officer of the U.S. Army.
"Permit me to extend to you my heartfelt sympathy for the loss of your son, Private First Class Lloyd R. Bruntmyer, 19048974, Air Corps, who died on the 1st of November, 1942, from inattention at Cabanatuan Camp, Philippine Islands, while a prisoner of war of the Japanese," he wrote.
That was all.
Ray Bruntmyer and family history researchers like Eakin have since found more information about the dead, information Ray plans to bring with him to Wichita.
He knows that bodies of the newly dead were dumped a dozen at a time into holes dug outside Cabanatuan. Eakin found much of this; he was searching for his dead cousin, and helped Ray search for his brother.
Later, a lot of the bodies were dug up and reburied near Manila.
The Japanese kept some records; the U.S. military tried to compile more. There were some attempts to report who was in those graves, but not enough for the military to positively identify a lot of them.
And so the war ended with a lot of mysteries for a lot of grieving families.
Ray hopes maybe he can begin solving one of them in Wichita this weekend.
* He lived only 21 years.
* His only notable deed: Surviving the Bataan Death March, only to die soon after.
* The U.S. military is not entirely sure where he is buried. The American service members who died by the thousands in the Japanese concentration camps were dumped by their Japanese Army captors a dozen at a time in mass graves.
* In 69 years since then, nearly every person who cared about Lloyd has died.
* His brother, Ray, was only 6 when Lloyd left home; Ray barely remembers him.
Those are the facts.
They seem to dictate that a long-ago Army Air Corps serviceman who died from inattention in 1942 should be forgotten from inattention, too.
But the fact is, facts matter, but people matter more; which is why an elderly and health-challenged Ray Bruntmyer plans to come all the way from Arlington, Texas, to the Hyatt Regency Wichita today.
He wants to find a way to find his brother's remains, and bring Lloyd home.
At the Hyatt Regency Wichita today, the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel office plans to meet, privately, with more than 100 families who want help locating family remains from every war America has fought during the past century. The meetings are with families only, and are designed to protect their privacy.
Among the people they will meet will be Ray Bruntmyer, a 79-year-old survivor of recent bypass surgery and a staph infection, along with his wife, Sandra, who recently suffered a serious illness and a head injury from a fall. He plans to bring a few pieces of paper, documents that he and a friend and fellow Texan named John Eakin have found with their own research; the papers might help pinpoint which grave in Manila that Lloyd Bruntmyer might have ended up buried in.
"John and I are kind of troublemakers," Ray said.
"I'm not even sure why we're doing this," Ray said with a little laugh the other day, on the phone from his Texas home.
But then he began to tell a story, and the details in that story paint a faint but discernible picture, not of a fact but of a person.
"Lloyd was a good-looking guy," Ray said. "Six feet tall, 168 pounds. He joined the Army in 1940. Our whole family was military."
One of their other brothers, Harry, fought in the battle of the Bulge. Two brothers served in the Korean War.
Lloyd was serving with the Army Air Corps at Clark Field near Manila when World War II began for the United States on December 7, 1941. Clark Field, which is across the International Dateline, was attacked by the Japanese just hours after Pearl Harbor.
After that, the invading Japanese Army drove the Americans and their Filipino allies down the Bataan peninsula, then trapped and overwhelmed them.
More than 70,000 American and Filipino troops were force-marched along roads to prison camps during the Bataan Death March. Thousands died or were executed. It was one of the more notorious human atrocities of the war, and inspired tens of thousands of American youngsters to enlist in the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Corps.
Lloyd survived the march.
The family got one censored letter from Lloyd from the prison camp, with a lot of words scratched out by Japanese censors. But even with all the scratched out words, a tiny flicker of humor emerged. He said that they fed them "fish and rice for breakfast, and rice and fish for dinner."
But the fact was, they didn't feed them enough, didn't give them water, or if there was water, it was filthy and dangerous. Thousands of men died, from malnutrition, dysentery and other diseases. There was no medical treatment.
And after that one letter, there was no further word from Lloyd. When World War II ended, no one knew what had happened.
In April 1946, the Bruntmyer family in Iowa finally got a letter from an officer of the U.S. Army.
"Permit me to extend to you my heartfelt sympathy for the loss of your son, Private First Class Lloyd R. Bruntmyer, 19048974, Air Corps, who died on the 1st of November, 1942, from inattention at Cabanatuan Camp, Philippine Islands, while a prisoner of war of the Japanese," he wrote.
That was all.
Ray Bruntmyer and family history researchers like Eakin have since found more information about the dead, information Ray plans to bring with him to Wichita.
He knows that bodies of the newly dead were dumped a dozen at a time into holes dug outside Cabanatuan. Eakin found much of this; he was searching for his dead cousin, and helped Ray search for his brother.
Later, a lot of the bodies were dug up and reburied near Manila.
The Japanese kept some records; the U.S. military tried to compile more. There were some attempts to report who was in those graves, but not enough for the military to positively identify a lot of them.
And so the war ended with a lot of mysteries for a lot of grieving families.
Ray hopes maybe he can begin solving one of them in Wichita this weekend.
* His only notable deed: Surviving the Bataan Death March, only to die soon after.
* The U.S. military is not entirely sure where he is buried. The American service members who died by the thousands in the Japanese concentration camps were dumped by their Japanese Army captors a dozen at a time in mass graves.
* In 69 years since then, nearly every person who cared about Lloyd has died.
* His brother, Ray, was only 6 when Lloyd left home; Ray barely remembers him.
Those are the facts.
They seem to dictate that a long-ago Army Air Corps serviceman who died from inattention in 1942 should be forgotten from inattention, too.
But the fact is, facts matter, but people matter more; which is why an elderly and health-challenged Ray Bruntmyer plans to come all the way from Arlington, Texas, to the Hyatt Regency Wichita today.
He wants to find a way to find his brother's remains, and bring Lloyd home.
At the Hyatt Regency Wichita today, the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel office plans to meet, privately, with more than 100 families who want help locating family remains from every war America has fought during the past century. The meetings are with families only, and are designed to protect their privacy.
Among the people they will meet will be Ray Bruntmyer, a 79-year-old survivor of recent bypass surgery and a staph infection, along with his wife, Sandra, who recently suffered a serious illness and a head injury from a fall. He plans to bring a few pieces of paper, documents that he and a friend and fellow Texan named John Eakin have found with their own research; the papers might help pinpoint which grave in Manila that Lloyd Bruntmyer might have ended up buried in.
"John and I are kind of troublemakers," Ray said.
"I'm not even sure why we're doing this," Ray said with a little laugh the other day, on the phone from his Texas home.
But then he began to tell a story, and the details in that story paint a faint but discernible picture, not of a fact but of a person.
"Lloyd was a good-looking guy," Ray said. "Six feet tall, 168 pounds. He joined the Army in 1940. Our whole family was military."
One of their other brothers, Harry, fought in the battle of the Bulge. Two brothers served in the Korean War.
Lloyd was serving with the Army Air Corps at Clark Field near Manila when World War II began for the United States on December 7, 1941. Clark Field, which is across the International Dateline, was attacked by the Japanese just hours after Pearl Harbor.
After that, the invading Japanese Army drove the Americans and their Filipino allies down the Bataan peninsula, then trapped and overwhelmed them.
More than 70,000 American and Filipino troops were force-marched along roads to prison camps during the Bataan Death March. Thousands died or were executed. It was one of the more notorious human atrocities of the war, and inspired tens of thousands of American youngsters to enlist in the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Corps.
Lloyd survived the march.
The family got one censored letter from Lloyd from the prison camp, with a lot of words scratched out by Japanese censors. But even with all the scratched out words, a tiny flicker of humor emerged. He said that they fed them "fish and rice for breakfast, and rice and fish for dinner."
But the fact was, they didn't feed them enough, didn't give them water, or if there was water, it was filthy and dangerous. Thousands of men died, from malnutrition, dysentery and other diseases. There was no medical treatment.
And after that one letter, there was no further word from Lloyd. When World War II ended, no one knew what had happened.
In April 1946, the Bruntmyer family in Iowa finally got a letter from an officer of the U.S. Army.
"Permit me to extend to you my heartfelt sympathy for the loss of your son, Private First Class Lloyd R. Bruntmyer, 19048974, Air Corps, who died on the 1st of November, 1942, from inattention at Cabanatuan Camp, Philippine Islands, while a prisoner of war of the Japanese," he wrote.
That was all.
Ray Bruntmyer and family history researchers like Eakin have since found more information about the dead, information Ray plans to bring with him to Wichita.
He knows that bodies of the newly dead were dumped a dozen at a time into holes dug outside Cabanatuan. Eakin found much of this; he was searching for his dead cousin, and helped Ray search for his brother.
Later, a lot of the bodies were dug up and reburied near Manila.
The Japanese kept some records; the U.S. military tried to compile more. There were some attempts to report who was in those graves, but not enough for the military to positively identify a lot of them.
And so the war ended with a lot of mysteries for a lot of grieving families.
Ray hopes maybe he can begin solving one of them in Wichita this weekend.
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