G.I. CONTINUES TO TOUCH LIVES 21 YEARS AFTER DEATH IN BATTLE

Elon and Arch Widdison couldn't bear the thought of burying the empty casket the military offered hem when their son didn't come home from Vietnam.

The West Bountiful couple first got word their son, Imlay Scott Widdison, 22, was listed as missing in action on May 16, 1968. It wasn't until four months later that they learned that the second of their seven children, called Scott by family and friends, had been killed during the first battle he entered.That's when Scott's name was entered with countless others on a military list, one detailing the servicemen who were "Killed in Action, Bodies Never Returned."

"His dad said he knew from the beginning. I did not," Mrs. Widdison said.

"From what we understand, Scott was the first one killed in that battle. We knew there was no chance of that body ever coming home."

The family decided they wanted to find an appropriate way to remember their Army soldier. So at a private memorial service under a blue sky, the Widdisons dedicated a flagpole in the front yard to Scott, placing his military headstone at its foot.

At the service, his two brothers played their trumpets. His grandfather, Roy Imlay, for whom he was named, delivered the eulogy.

Imlay Scott Widdison's name is carved in the stark black marble wall that makes up the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.; at the Punchbowl Cemetery in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and in a hallowed Pentagon hallway, where only families of soldiers missing in action are allowed to speak.

But this Memorial Day story, about a soldier dead for 21 years, is also about the miraculous way his memory lives on. "I can't believe he is still touching lives after 21 years," his mother said, "but he is."

Widdison's name is also inscribed in the hearts of a local fifth-grade class. Marlene Bodrero, a teacher at Valley View Elementary School, said she loves teaching social studies. "They say if it's red-white-and-blue, it's down in my room."

She was looking for a way to help her students identify with the fallen heroes of war. "A lot of times we think about these people, these names, and we don't give them a heartbeat."

Bodrero had years earlier read a story about Scott Widdison in a local newspaper. Something in his mischievous, boyish grin made her remember him. And that's when she approached the Widdisons to see if her class could adopt their hero.