Beverly Guliuzza was overcome with a mix of shock, sadness and relief when military officials told her they had identified the remains of her brother, Benjamin Bazzell, an Army corporal who went missing in action during the Korean War in 1950 when she was just 12.
The notification to Guliuzza, now 84 and living with family in Everett, Washington, came last year, seven decades after she had last seen her older brother in their hometown of Seymour, Connecticut. The identification was publicly announced Tuesday by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, an arm of the U.S. Defense Department.
“When I found out all of this, it was just very sad but also very thankful that there was closure because it had always been missing in action and we never knew,” Guliuzza said in a phone interview Wednesday. “When someone is reported missing in action it’s like you’re in limbo. My mom never got to have closure.”
