Charles Stewart
What I know about Charles Stewart is pretty much summed up in the paragraphs below. They’re from the Hopedale history email that I send out twice a month, beginning with the one sent on August 1, 2006, and then from August 15, 2006.
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Here’s something I’ve been wondering about lately. Maybe one or more of you can satisfy my curiosity. It’s about an article I ran across while going through scrapbooks at the Bancroft Library.
December 7, 1944 – T-Sgt Charles Clarence Stewart, 23, turret gunner and engineer, foster son of Mr. and Mrs. Louis J. McVitty, 50 Greene Street, has officially been reported killed in action, Sept. 14, by the War Department and his parents were so notified this morning. A telegram, listing him as missing over Germany, was received Sept. 27 and today’s news confirmed his foster parent’s worst fears.
That, in part, was the Milford News article on the matter. So…why isn’t his name on the war memorial at Hopedale Village Cemetery?
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Charles Stewart update. Last time, I asked if anyone knew why Charles Stewart, killed in action in 1944, according to a Milford News article at the time, wasn’t listed on the veterans’ monument at Hopedale Village Cemetery. It turns out that the report of Stewart’s death was greatly exaggerated.
After several phone calls, I found out from Tracey Liberatore that Stewart is alive, well, and living in Shrewsbury. (Tracey’s mother-in-law is Stewart’s foster sister.) I called him and here’s a bit of what he told me. He was a turret gunner and engineer on a B-24 in September 1944 when his plane was shot down near the border of Germany and Czechoslovakia. He parachuted out and very shortly after landing was taken in by partisans in the area. He was with them during the rest of the war and never ended up in a POW camp. Evidently, lists of prisoners were being exchanged, but since he wasn’t on them, it seems likely that the War Department eventually concluded that he must have been killed and notified his foster parents, the McVittys.