Separate Truths

Why did he have anything on him when most Air Force officers had to store personal effects in a locker before a mission?

Why was the bone fragment not good enough to establish a match with the blood sample she gave in 1992 but now can be matched with the letters?

"No one is telling the truth in this story," she said. "That's the bottom line. No one is telling the truth."

Her proof, she said, includes statements from a former POW who was in her brother's squadron. He told her that he saw photographs of Scharf after the crash. There is also a propaganda film in which a man can be seen for only seconds but walks exactly like her brother, she said.

"I used to say he swiveled when he walked," Lowerison said. "He had a little bit of a sway to him."

About two weeks before he disappeared, she received a letter from him. In it, he told her that he was sending her a ring for her birthday and that he had "some good war stories" to tell her boys when he got home, she said.

She thinks he would appreciate the fight she has launched in his name. "He would have a smile on his face and give me a thumbs-up sign," she said.

If she had never seen the evidence, never heard from others who think he didn't die in the crash, she said, she might have gone along with the military's version, might have been able to bury him long ago. She still might be able to, she said, but not this way.

"If they come and tell me he died six months ago, I'd go along with it," she said. "I would go to that burial."

Lowerison and Patricia Scharf don't speak ill of each other. They don't speak much of each other at all, each dismissing the other's beliefs in short, neutral sentences. "That's her prerogative," Lowerison said of Scharf. "Everyone has different ways of grieving," Scharf said of Lowerison.

So on Thursday, Scharf will stand before her husband's plot at Arlington, content that she has a place now to lay flowers. Lowerison will remain in California, not saying goodbye, not letting go.