Remains of MIA Pilots Identified

The McKains held a memorial service about three months later in Garden City, where the family had moved in the mid-1950s.

There was also a woman in Bobby's life. "Patti. From Alabama," McKain said. "I'll be doggone if they were engaged or busted up when he was shot down. I remember her name being Patti. P-A-T-T-I."

Seventeen years passed. In June 1985, a U.S. citizen with "ties to Southeast Asian refugees" came across bundles of human remains, the department said. The U.S. citizen -- whose name officials did not know yesterday but said is probably deep within their reports -- found five small bundles of bone and teeth fragments. The U.S. citizen believed the remains were from the crew of an AC-130 "Spectre Gunship" that crashed in March 1972 in Savannakhet, Laos, Pentagon spokesman Larry Greer said.

But lab results later disproved any link between that crash and the remains, Greer said. Forensic anthropologists saved the evidence and sought to match DNA from the remains to families of missing soldiers.

Outside the lab, military investigators scoured the Laos-Vietnam border areas from 1989 to 2003. They made five attempts to locate McKain and Chaney's crash site.

But anthropologists in the lab finally made the match. They had DNA swabs from both families and matched them to the remains delivered by the U.S. citizen.

After Gib McKain received that call five weeks ago, he and the Chaneys exchanged letters.

"They said we can come to their services at Arlington, and I wrote back saying they were welcome at ours," McKain said.

Bobby McKain will be buried on Aug. 11 and Chaney on Sept. 16. It is unclear what else the two men had in common, except, to Gib McKain's amusement, their mothers were both named Lillian.