February 06, 2008

Woodward: Scott Everhart Brewer's mystery is solved …

… Thanks to the Internet and many Statesman readers

Everyone loves a mystery, right?Especially when it can be solved.

Last week's column on Scott Everhart Brewer is a good example. Brewer was a Boisean who died in Germany while serving as a gunner on a B-24 during World War II. Last month, a German named Tomas Hauschild was working with a metal detector when he found Brewer's dog tag 64 years after his plane was shot down. Hauschild wants to give it to one of Brewer's relatives.

But how? Brewer never married. Would any of his family members even be alive after so many years? If so, who and where and how to find them? And who was the mysterious "Mary" whose name was on a bracelet he was wearing when he died?

My phone was ringing when I came to work the day the column was published and didn't stop for four hours. Readers called and e-mailed from as far away as Virginia.

Bit by bit, pieces of the puzzle began to fit together:

Boisean Dan Lute went through old city directories and found that Brewer had a sister named Juanita and a brother named Millard. Juanita was listed as a Navy nurse, Millard as a reporter and photographer. Their father, Paul Brewer, was a salesman at the Mode, a Downtown department store.

Ronda Watson searched genealogical records on the Internet and found two more siblings, brothers Paul and Noel.

Former Big Sky Commissioner Ron Stephenson checked census records and called to report that Brewer had had a grandmother named Mary in Illinois. The Mary on the bracelet?

Several people called to say they knew the Brewers when they lived at 1202 E. Washington, the address engraved on Brewer's dog tag. Harry O'Neil, 85, knew them best.

"Noel was my best friend," O'Neil said. "I knew Scott when he was a bartender at a place called the Smokehouse in Downtown Boise. He was a good-looking guy and probably the most popular of all the Brewer kids. He was friendly to everyone and always had a smile on his face. It was a terrible blow when the family learned that he was missing in action."

A terrible blow made worse by the fact that Paul Brewer, the Mode salesman and the children's father, had died of natural causes two days earlier.

Noel Brewer, O'Neil said, later moved to New Mexico and had three children. Juanita Brewer "married a football player. They got married in Seattle and had a son."

Records show that Brewer's sister and all of his brothers have died. But there was a good chance that Juanita's and Noel's children were still alive. Finding them, however, could be difficult.

Then came the e-mail from Elinor Chehey. Chehey grew up across the alley from the Brewers' house. She not only remembered Juanita's son's name - Richard Justice - she'd found a telephone number for him.

A couple of hours later, once my phone had stopped ringing, I was talking to him.

O'Neil was right about Juanita's marrying a football player.

"My dad, Edward Justice, was an All-American halfback with Gonzaga University and went on to play for the Washington Redskins," he said. "He played in the Pro Bowl. I have a copy of his NFL contract. He made $165 per game."

Justice doesn't have any brothers or sisters. But he does have three cousins - Noel Brewer's children - all alive and well and living in New Mexico.

He thinks the "Mary" on the bracelet was his late uncle's girlfriend.

A day after our conversation, however, the New Mexico branch of the family called. Scott Brewer is named for the Scott Brewer who was shot down. He has a brother named Terry and a sister, Christy Evans. She thinks the Mary on the bracelet was Scott Everhart Brewer's aunt, a nun named Sister Mary Paul.

So who gets the dog tag? Justice would like to have it to pass on to his son, a family history buff. Scott Brewer would like to have it because it belonged to his namesake. When the family decides, arrangements will be made for Hauschild to send it.

So - thanks to the Internet and a lot of Statesman readers - a family is about to receive an heirloom 64 years in the making.

"We never knew Uncle Scott's story before," Evans said. "We asked our dad about his brother, but he'd never talk about it and now I see why. He lost his father and two days later his brother. We never knew that. The whole thing has always been a family mystery. Now we finally know what happened."

Tim Woodward: 377-6409