Inside the Portage County line By GENE KEMMETER of The Gazette HONORS FOR A HERO: Margery Aber wasn't alive to see it, but she would have been proud on Friday, March 22. Remains of her brother, Lt. Col. Earle J. Aber Jr., was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., along with 2nd Lt. Maurice J. Harper of Pell City, Ala., more than 56 years after they died. Margery Aber, the founder of the Suzuki program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, died Thursday, Aug. 16, 2001, at St. Michael's Hospital at the age of 87. She may not have known the remains of her brother were going to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. In June 2000, she and her younger sister, Jean Murphy of South Bend, Ind., had gone to Britain as some of the wreckage of the B-17 bomber piloted by her brother was removed from the River Stour at Harwich, England. On May 4, 1945, her brother, a 23-year-old U.S. Army Air Corps pilot from Racine, was piloting the plane named "Tondalago" as it and its crew of nine, including co-pilot Harper, 21, returned from a mission over Germany. A lone German plane invaded British air space, and anti-aircraft fire filled the sky, hitting the "Tondalago." Aber and Harper remained in the cockpit, trying to fly the plane as the others bailed out. Then the plane exploded and went down in flames with Aber and Harper still aboard. The next day, a portion of Earle Aber's arm was found, identified by an Eagle Scout ring from the Boy Scouts of America that he wore. The portion of the arm was buried in Cambridge and the ring was sent to Aber's mother. Then Margery returned to Britain in 2000, she took along the ring and wore it, with many people asking to see it. Aber said her brother wasn't flying as frequently as he had been earlier in the war, but had more than 100 missions before the fateful flight. He was in charge of 500 to 700 men on a base and his unit dropped leaflets from the air on selected sites. He had helped to develop the leaflet strategy, she said, using an explosive to spread the leaflet closer to the target area instead of having them flitter down to the ground from the plane in a more scattered area. He was a lead plane for leaflets on D-Day, advising French citizens of the invasion, and wound up receiving a number of awards from the U.S. and its allies, including the Croix de Guerre from France. She expected the remains found in the plane wreckage would be buried in Cambridge with the portion of his arm, and his identifiable remains will be laid to rest there soon. But small fragments are sometimes impossible to identify, so his remains and those of Harper that couldn't be identified separately were buried together at Arlington. When the remains were recovered, Aber talked about her brother with The Gazette in an article that appeared in the July 28, 2000, issue. "That will be the final closure," she said. "But one of the hard things for me, is talking about bones. What is most important is his spirit. He had a wonderful spirit." The article is available on The Gazette Web page, www.pcgazette.com, by clicking on News, then selecting the 2000 button under "Back Issues," then selecting the "July 2000" button and selecting "WWII death nears closure" from the July 28, 2000, listing. The direct link to the story is http://www.pcgazette.com/news/2000/july00/aber7-28.htm.