Dorothy “Dottie” Stewart is 104 years old, and on Sept. 29 she finally held something that had been missing from her family for more than eight decades: her brother Bernard Parnell's U.S. Navy dog tags, lost since he died in a 1943 plane crash during World War II. The tags were handed to her at a ceremony at the Greater Beverly YMCA, a building where she herself once taught fitness classes and trained for decades.
Parnell enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve on Dec. 10, 1941, just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to The Beverly Beat. On May 17, 1943, his aircraft crashed in waters 23 miles northeast of Key West after suffering engine trouble, the outlet reports, while CBS Boston describes the crash simply as happening off the coast of Florida after engine trouble struck the plane. Seven men were aboard. Only one survived.
A Half-Decade Search Ends With Census Records
The tags came to light through the work of Ken McKay, Beverly's assistant veterans services officer, who located them a few years ago while researching local veterans, according to the same Beverly Beat account. For four to five years, the tags hung in a frame in McKay's office while he tried to determine whose they were and where they belonged, the station's report notes. McKay eventually connected the tags to Parnell, and then to Stewart, after reviewing records tied to a 1972 application for Parnell's headstone at Arlington National Cemetery — though The Beverly Beat reports that application was filed in 1971, a discrepancy the two outlets do not reconcile. From there, McKay searched census records to track down Stewart herself.
“It's going back where it belongs, and that was my objective,” McKay said. The tags were ultimately mounted on a piece of oak and purpleheart wood before being presented to Stewart, per the same account.
Only One Man Survived the Crash
Of the seven men aboard Parnell's plane, Lieutenant James Digh was the only one who survived, clinging to a rubber raft until rescuers found him a day later, according to The Beverly Beat. Parnell had given Digh the last remaining life jacket before the crash, and his body was never recovered. Stewart and her sister visited Digh at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and he stayed in touch with her parents.
Stewart grew up with Parnell and three other siblings in Arlington, Virginia; Parnell was the second-oldest child and a few years older than Dottie. She has described her brother as an accomplished commercial artist and an excellent swimmer. For years she kept his memory alive with a portrait and memorial flag she lent to the local American Legion, which were later lost.
A Record-Setting Life in Beverly
Stewart moved to Beverly in 1954 after her husband, Francis Stewart, a World War II Coast Guard veteran, was transferred to Salem; he ended his career there in 1962. She went on to teach classes and train at the Greater Beverly YMCA for decades, and later built a competitive rowing career that drew national attention. CBS Boston reports she won five consecutive world championships in indoor rowing in what she calls the 95-plus age group, stopping only once COVID hit.
At 101, she set a world record by rowing 2,000 meters on an indoor machine in 16 minutes and 35 seconds, becoming the first person over 100 to hit that mark. She has maintained an active life, including rowing and sports.
When the dog tags were finally placed in her hands at the ceremony, roughly 40 friends were there to witness it. “I broke down and cried. I just held it after I kissed it,” Stewart said, adding that the moment brought back a flood of memories of her brother.
Part of a Larger Pattern of Recovered War Mementos
Stewart's story fits into a wider trend of WWII-era dog tags resurfacing decades after the fact and finding their way back to family. WRAL reported that dog tags belonging to Raleigh veteran Thomas L. Vaughn Jr. were found near a historic battle site in Tuscany, Italy, after a metal detector enthusiast discovered them beneath an olive tree and turned to a Raleigh-based Facebook group for help finding Vaughn's family. His nephew later confirmed the tags were his uncle's. McKay's broader veterans work in Beverly includes identifying, cleaning and restoring gravestones for soldiers who served long before World War I, according to The Salem News, a mission that ultimately helped bring Parnell's tags home to his sister.
