Korean War veteran Tobin MIA no longer

From staff reports

John Sawyer, Graves Registration officer for the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, had just met with Linda Dewey to help restore the Glen Arbor Township Cemetery (now called the Forest Haven Cemetery) on Oct. 30. On his way home he observed the Tobin Cemetery on County Road 677, just south of the Glen Lake Narrows. About an acre in size, the cemetery is cared for by St. Philp Neri Church in Empire and includes military headstones from the Civil war, World Wars I and II. 

Among several Tobin family headstones is a granite stone inscribed “Memorial Headstone, Walter Tobin, 1928-1950, Lost in Korea”.

“How sad,” he thought, “that a local Glen Arbor soldier, age 22, who was killed in Korea, never made it home. I wondered if he would ever be found.”

Sawyer’s visit was serendipitous. Several days later, news broke that Tobin’s remains, identified in August by the U.S. Defense Department, will return home this month and be buried on Nov. 14. In July North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un turned over 55 boxes of the remains of American soldiers killed during the war. They were subsequently sent to the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor to be identified using anthropological and DNA analysis.

Tobin was killed on Dec. 2, 1950, when enemy forces attacked his unit near the Chosin Reservoir.