BYU students search for families of missing troops
Stars & Stripes reports that Brigham Young University’s Center for Family History and Genealogy is helping DPAA search for the families of soldiers who were missing from America’s wars overseas.
The process of finding those relatives, though, is a difficult one. Jill Crandell, who oversees BYU’s family history center and its efforts on the project, said there’s often little information to start with. It’s sort of like if Sherlock Holmes were trying to solve a case blindfolded.
And the genealogical researchers are essentially working in reverse. Instead of building a family tree back in time for several generations, they’re trying to build it forward to today. They’re finding the living through the name of the dead.
“There’s just enough clues for us,” Crandell said.
BYU, a private university, is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has a dedicated genealogical division and operates FamilySearch (one of the world’s largest databases for family records). That’s why the military chose the school for its project. It’s the only college of the 19 participating to focus on finding living relatives for missing soldiers; the others specialize in anthropology and archaeology.
[…]
The BYU team — five students, a fellow and Crandell — worked on a case in which the mother of a soldier continued to set a plate at the dinner table each night for her son, who was missing in action. They also spoke to the 97-year-old widow of a WWII soldier who still wants to know what happened to her husband.
If I remember correctly, the BYU’s Genealogy department exists so that Mormons can search for antecedents and make them Mormons.
Category: We Remember
Wife does extensive genealogical research on the families, says she finds the BYU info error-ridden and not well researched.
A lot of the BYU archived info comes from individual Mormon family’s research efforts and passed-down info and could be iffy.
One word response: Fauxcahontas.
Not surprised by this at all.
In my experience, those Mormon types are short on words and very. very long on actions,
They do a lot of selfless. tremendous good all over the orld and neither ask for, and sadly seldom receive and credit.
Did you know? …
Post-Hurricane Katrina – they had semis loaded with bottled water for victims/survivors/1sr responders/etc.
The Mormon church owns and operates (if memory serves) 3 of the 5 nongovernmental mobile surgery centers, and rush them to any disaster in the US. staffed by their own MDs, RNs, etc. (IDC SARC, help me out on terminology here?)
I could go on, a lot, but no need here I think.
Those Mormons are solid, very solid good people as a rule, from what I have seen or had relayed to me.
So be nice to and look out for those nice young fellows you see riding in pairs (ALWAYS in pairs) on their bicycles in shirts & ties, no matter how hot it is. They’ve earned the consideration as a group, in my opinion.