Military honors
Nearly 63 years after being shot down, local veteran is laid to rest

Detroit – Staff Sgt. Joseph Michael King has had a gravestone in Woodmere Cemetery in southwest Detroit since 1975. As of last Friday, his earthly remains are in the cemetery, too.

King was one of 500 young men from Holy Cross (Hungarian) Parish in Detroit's Delray district to serve in World War II, and one of 19 from the parish to die in the war.

His family now knows Sgt. King died April 16, 1944, along with the rest of the 10-member crew of a U.S. Army Air Corps plane when it went down over what is now Papua New Guinea. Until five years ago, when the wreck was discovered, they only knew he had gone missing in action that day. But his family had kept hoping they would one day know for sure, and his parents placed a gravestone in Woodmere Cemetery 32 years ago.

His only surviving sister – 91-year-old Mary Cibor of Lincoln Park – promised her parents she would bring her brother's remains back to Detroit if they were ever found. And even after they were found, she had to wrestle with Army bureaucracy for five years to get them sent here.

Robert Delaney | The Michigan Catholic A U.S. Army honor guard from Fort Knox, Ky., carries the coffin containing the remains of Joseph King out of Holy Cross in Delray last Friday.

Sgt. King was 21 when he died. Last Friday, just days short of 63 years after his death, Cibor was able to attend his funeral at Holy Cross Church, where she is still a member.

And old friends and schoolmates such as Alex Nemeth, 83, of Allen Park, were also among the approximately 100 mourners at the church.

The Army sent a contingent of soldiers from Fort Knox in Kentucky to serve as honor guard for the coffin, and Sgt. First Class Melissa Mitchell, casualty assistance officer with the Army's 645th Regional Support Group in Southfield, was there to escort Cibor into and out of the church.

"Joseph and his comrades made the ultimate sacrifice," said Franciscan Fr. Barnabas Kiss, Holy Cross's pastor, in his homily.

Citing Christ's words in John 15:13, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends," Fr. Kiss praised King and all those who have served and are serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

"Surely, one of God's greatest gifts to us is human freedom," he said.

Army Sgt. Michael Fisher stands at attention by the coffin of Joseph King in the narthex of Holy Cross Church, Delray, before the funeral service last Friday.

After the Mass, before heading to the cemetery, family members assisted Cibor in placing a wreath before the parish's outdoor Sorrowful Mother statue, a monument honoring the parish's war dead, including Sgt. King.

Nemeth remembered his old classmate from Holy Cross Grade School and Southwestern High School as a good friend: "We grew up in the old Hungarian neighborhood of Delray together. As children, we played baseball and hockey, and I remember he was a good poet in high school. Basically, it was a beautiful life in the old neighborhood."

Nemeth was another of those 500 Holy Cross parishioners to serve in World War II. He entered the Army about nine months after his friend, and served in the 82nd Airborne in Europe.