Remains identified in Vietnam of Utahn missing since 1968

Finally, there is closure — human remains, DNA evidence, a dog tag, remnants of eyeglasses and a little piece of a watch band.

Deep down some family members felt they knew the truth all along, that missing Air Force pilot Maj. Robert F. Woods, shot down over Vietnam nearly 40 years ago, was killed in action.

The Department of Defense produced a final report earlier this year on Woods. Family members were notified about three months ago, and the information about Woods was released to the public Friday. A funeral with full military honors for Woods is scheduled to take place at Arlington National Cemetery next April, when one of his children said the cherry blossoms there should be in bloom.

"I think what has touched us the most is that the Air Force never gave up. Never," Woods' adopted daughter, Lana Woods Taylor, 64, said Friday on the phone from her home in Arizona.

On June 26, 1968, Woods, born in Roosevelt, was considered missing in action. An immediate search was unsuccessful for the remains of Woods and Capt. Johnnie C. Cornelius of Arizona, who was on the plane Woods was flying.

One of his seven siblings, sister Ardeth Woods Matthews, 75, said that on July 1, 1968, Woods was supposed to quit flying and take a more active role on the ground in Vietnam as a flight commander. He never got the chance.

His wife, Mary Woods, held out hope until she died 11 years ago that her husband was still alive. She passed that hope on to her three biological children still living at home in Germany, where Woods was stationed when he went off to Vietnam. Over the years, Woods' wife would seek out MIA reports and photos, hoping she would find good news.

"It was very difficult for my brother and sisters, because they were still at home — so, they believed, too," Taylor said.

But Taylor, 24 at the time, was married to an Air Force man, Tom Taylor, who in his job in the area of defense intelligence had access to documents that both of them felt proved how Woods would not have been able to survive the crash.

"My sisters and brother were living in limbo," Taylor said.

It took time for Matthews to come to her own conclusion.

"As the years go by, you know darn well he isn't here, he's not alive," she said.