A funeral was scheduled on Friday for a World War II airman whose body was found on a mountainside where his plane crashed more than six decades earlier.
Leo Mustonen, who was just 22 when he died preparing to join the war effort, was to be laid to rest in the central Minnesota community of Brainerd, where he was raised by Finnish immigrant parents.
Mustonen’s body was found by climbers in October in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and it was recently identified through DNA tests at an air-force base in Hawaii. He was with three others on an AT-7 navigational training plane that crashed on November 18 1942.
The Reverend Andy Smith, who was to preach at the funeral at First Lutheran Church, said the service would be unique because of the long time between Mustonen’s death and his burial, but the preparations were similar to those for other funerals he had led. — Sapa-AP