EAST TEXAS – After 76 years, one missing East Texan hero has returned home to his final resting place.
The remains of Cpl. Orestus Marion Stewart, a Magnolia Springs native, who died in battle on August 11, 1950, was identified last November, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Stewart’s remains arrived at Houston Intercontinental Airport on Wednesday morning, and an honorable escort accompanied the hearse carrying him to Jasper for a funeral service on Saturday in Jasper, where he will be interred at Springhill Cemetery, with full military honors.
According to his service records, Stewart was a member of the Medical Company, Ninth Infantry Regiment in the Second Infantry Division in the Army. On that fateful August day in 1950, he was part of a task force that was sent to defend the city of P’ohang-dong and Yonil Airfield in South Korea from a North Korean attack.
The North Korean People’s Army was awaiting the task force when it reached Yonil, and in the fighting, Stewart was killed. Conditions at that time prevented the recovery of his remains. In April 1954, Army personnel and South Korean citizens recovered a set of remains from a shallow grave near Pugni-dong in South Korea, and although the remains were Stewart’s, they made a circuitous route back to the States to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, but interred as “Unknown.”
In 2022, those remains were disinterred and sent to a laboratory for analysis and discovered to be of Stewart.
Stewart was previously memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, and his name inscribed on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
The procession that headed north from Houston, went through Cleveland and Livingston before turning onto US 190 to head eastbound to Jasper, and along the way, residents of Woodville lined the streets to pay respects to the fallen hero.
Stewart’s arrangements are being handled by Coleman’s Mortuary of Jasper, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6380 of Jasper is involved in the reception. The service is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 23 at the Springhill Missionary Baptist Church in Magnolia Springs with interment to follow.
