Daily Herald opinion: An Elgin woman is paying final tribute to her uncle, killed in the Korean War. And we can as well.

Gloria Valle’s mother and aunts died believing the Army had forgotten their brother.

Eriverto Ortiz, a U.S. Army corporal, was declared missing-in-action during the Korean War. Only 27, he was killed on Sept. 22, 1950, but fierce fighting made searching for him impossible at the time. Despite attempts later, his remains were eventually considered nonrecoverable.

After the war, the family moved from Texas to Elgin. The next generation grew up hearing about their uncle and assuming, like their parents, that Ortiz had been forgotten.

Then last month, 74 years after Ortiz went missing, Valle received a call: The body of the uncle she never knew had been positively identified.

And on Monday, she and more than 20 other relatives will be there when Ortiz is finally laid to rest at Bluff City Cemetery in Elgin, where his sister is also buried.

After all these years, Ortiz will be surrounded by his family and, Valle hopes, by others willing to take time out of their day to pay tribute to a soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice. She wants his funeral open to the public. And she wants others to join her in honoring her uncle one last time.

Our reporter, Rick West, interviewed Valle this week about how the Army was able to return Ortiz’s body all these years later.

In 1951, unidentified remains were recovered from the vicinity where Ortiz went missing, and they were temporarily interred at the United Nations Military Cemetery in South Korea. Those remains were later moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

In 2018, as part of the Korean War Disinterment Project, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency used dental records and DNA analysis to start identifying the soldiers. The process, and connecting to the right family members, took time.

“My family thought they (the Army) had forgotten him,” Valle said. “The day that I got a call from the military, I looked up and said, ‘Wow Mom, they never gave up.’”

And for that, we as a nation should be grateful.

Thanks to the military’s efforts, and Valle’s, Ortiz will get the long-delayed burial, with full military honors, that he deserves.

Anyone in the community is invited to pay their respects, starting with a visitation on Sunday, Oct. 27, from 3 to 8 p.m. at Symonds-Madison Funeral Home at 305 Park St. in Elgin. There will be another short visitation from 11 a.m. until noon Monday, Oct. 28. at the funeral home before a 12:30 p.m. funeral mass at St. Mary Church, 400 Fulton St.

Interment with full military honors will follow at Bluff City Cemetery, 945 Bluff City Blvd., at approximately 2 p.m.

Valle hopes for a strong turnout, and we wish that for her as well as a community gathers to say a final farewell to Eriverto Ortiz and to thank him for his service — and for his sacrifice.

“This is, to me, a miracle,” Valle told West. “That’s why I want to give him the best welcome that we can. I want everybody to help me welcome him home so we can put him to rest in the country where he was born.”