Brotherly love

Before his mother died in 1969, Robert R. Dumas promised her he would keep trying to find out what happened to his younger brother, Roger, who went to fight in the Korean War and never returned.

“I’ll look for him as long as I can,” Dumas recalled telling his mother.

And so he did. But that search ended Saturday when Robert Dumas died at age 90.

Roger Dumas, an Army machine gunner with the 19th Infantry Regiment of the 24th Battalion, was captured on Nov. 4, 1950, during a battle near the Manchurian border. The Army changed his classification to presumed dead on Feb. 26, 1954.

The Dumas family was a large one. When Dumas, who lived in Canterbury, passed away he was listed as predeceased by 14 brothers and sisters.

But without proof, Robert would never accept the conclusion that his brother Roger was dead. Roger would be 88 if alive, which would seem highly unlikely if he had remained a prisoner of North Korea after the war.

Robert’s persistence was a striking example of brotherly love, sustained over decades of uncertainty. Robert was 22 when he began his quest of trying to find out what happened to Roger. He pressed the American government for all the information he could get, appealed to veterans’ groups for their assistance, would push any reporter he encountered to tell the story, and contacted his elected representatives to help in his efforts.

When an armistice ended U.S. involvement in the war in July 1953, there was great uncertainty about hundreds of missing soldiers. Robert Dumas was convinced the U.S. government had abandoned American prisoners left behind, too willingly accepting North Korean explanations that all surviving prisoners had been returned.

During Dumas’ long pursuit there were periodic reports that someone had seen something during a visit to North Korea that held out hope Roger might still be alive, but nothing concrete. According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, investigations and reported sightings “produced no useful information concerning live Americans.”

Though not successful, Robert Dumas’ lifelong efforts were admirable. Perhaps now, free of this earthly existence, he has his answers and a reunion.