For 75 years, Willene Crutsinger has been praying for the return of her uncle, Andrew Raymond "Sonny" Tischler, who went missing during the Korean War.
On Tuesday, those prayers will finally be answered.
"Oh, it's a relief," she said. "I was just a kid when it all happened, but I remember just praying and begging God to let him come home."
Sonny was born in Celina as the fifth child of nine, and the only boy at that.
Crutsinger's mother, Julia Shaw, was Sonny's oldest sister.
When the nine children lost their mother, Philomena "Minnie" Tischler, to pneumonia six weeks after their youngest sister was born, Sonny dedicated his life to helping their father, Andrew Edward Tischler, run their farm near the intersection of FM 455 and County Line Road and to taking care of the youngest four children.
"My mom talks about how they would sit on the porch in the evening and he would play guitar and sing," said Beth Robbs, another of Sonny's nieces. "They would just have a lot of fun, and he would play with them and try to scare them like big brothers like to do."
Robbs' mother, Doris Riney Faulk, was the second-to-the-youngest Tischler child.
Crutsinger remembers Sonny tagging along to her Shaw family reunions, flirting with her cousins on her dad's side of the family.
"They took a picture of him with one of my cousins, and they were a cute couple," Crutsinger said.
Sonny's father, whom Crutsinger lovingly calls Papa Tischler, had served in the Army during World War I, putting his ability to speak German to good use.
It was because of his own service that he discouraged Sonny from signing up, saying, "Don't go unless they call you," Crutsinger said, but Sonny wanted to dictate his own destiny.
"He said, 'Yes, I'm going to sign up, get it over with so when I get out I can come home and buy me a farm,'" Crutsinger said.
The Army took Sonny to Guam first after he enlisted on Oct. 26, 1948.
He was called up again, though, this time to Korea.
It was there, as a corporal assigned to Company F, 2nd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, that Sonny went missing on May 25, 1951.
He was part of a road march in Taewol, South Korea, and they came under fire.
"He was the only one missing from the group," Robbs said.
His fellow soldiers never found him.
"I think they declared him dead in 1953," Crutsinger said.
His service picture hung in his father and his sisters' homes over the years, keeping his memory alive.
It was on Dec. 8, 1953, that the American Graves Registration Service Group found Sonny's then-unidentified remains in a shallow grave on a farm in Korea near where his body had been found.
"He was out gathering wood on his farm, and he found Sonny and he asked a couple other farmers to come and help him [bury the soldier]," Robbs said.
The military attempted to identify his body at the Central Identification Unit in Kokura, Japan, but to no avail.
Sonny was honored posthumously with the Purple Heart on Jan. 15, 1954.
His temporary resting place became the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, located in the Punchbowl crater on Honolulu, Hawaii, starting in 1956.
He remained there, among thousands of other unidentified soldiers, until March 2024.
It was then that the DNA samples provided by Crutsinger and two of Sonny's sisters gave them the answer they had long prayed for, thanks to the work of the Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency.
Over the years, Crutsinger traveled the country annually to learn everything she could about the process of identifying soldiers missing in action.
The family learned that was possible thanks to Calvary Baptist Church Pastor Cecil Threadgill, who served in World War II as a military chaplain.
"He called me and told me, 'Willene, the army officials are looking for the families of the Korean veterans,' and so he's the one that got me to do this," Crutsinger said.
When the call finally came from the Army, Crutsinger missed it at first.
It took her and Robbs' cousin, Mary Anne Turner, to pick up when the Army called.
"She said, 'They've identified him,'" Crutsinger said. "I said, 'I'm sorry, Mary Anne, I don't know what you're talking about.' She said, 'Sonny! ... They identified him.'" Sonny will be welcomed home by a host of family members, including three living sisters.
"It's just incredible, because their whole life they've just worried that he was just lost," Robbs said. "We didn't even know that he was in Honolulu all those years, and his father never knew that his remains could possibly be [there]."
Some of their extended family have set plans to be in Texas for Sonny's funeral.
"It's going to be a good homecoming for him," Crutsinger said.
The family will get to go on the tarmac when the plane carrying him home touches down on Tuesday from Hawaii, and the American Legion riders will escort them back to the area.
Sonny's visitation will be Wednesday from 6-8 p.m. at Slay Memorial Funeral Center in Aubrey, Texas.
His funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at Slay Memorial Funeral Center in Aubrey, and his burial will follow at St. Thomas Cemetery.
The Vaughn-Walling American Legion Post 550 will also host a luncheon for the family and the public following the services.
Robbs said they were grateful for the support from the American Legion.
Patti Dellenbaugh, who is a member of the American Legion Post 550 Auxiliary, said it means a great deal to the members of the post to be part of the Tischler family's celebration and to support them as they welcome Sonny home.
"This is what it's all about—veterans—and it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing for them to be able to lay their brother to rest," she said. "It's incredible."
She invited the public to come to the reception to celebrate Sonny's homecoming with the family.
The Legion will also be decorating Washington Street from Corner Cafe to the cemetery in honor of Sonny with American flags and yellow ribbons.
She also mentioned that one of their members is paying for a hotel stay so the American Legion riders can stay by the airport for the escort home.
Dellenbaugh also said the entire town is invited to line Washington Street for the family members in the funeral procession to see a wall of support following Sonny's funeral.
For Crutsinger, who will turn 84 the day after Sonny's funeral, the longawaited answer brings a feeling of peace.
"I'm so glad I got to know that he was identified and he's going to get to come home," she said. "Seventyfive years is a long time not to know where somebody is. That's a lifetime."
And it will be good, she said, to know he's reunited with his parents.
"Two or three times lately when I've driven by the Catholic cemetery, I just said to myself, 'He's going to be right up front,'" Crutsinger said. "... At last he's going to get a good place, right by his mom and dad."
