A Slickville airman whose body had been missing for 80 years since his plane was shot down over Poland during World War II will be returning home this summer, his family said.
The remains of Staff Sgt. Stephen J. “Johnny” Fatur, which were recovered from a crash site in Poland, were identified in July 2025 through DNA analysis and circumstantial evidence, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Fatur is to be buried with full military honors Aug. 3 at his family’s plot at Twin Valley Memorial Park in Delmont, said Cheryl Lutz, a niece of Fatur’s who grew up in the Delmont area and now lives in Denver. For now, the Department of Defense is still holding his remains, said Susan Vacha, funeral director at Bash-Nied-Jobe Funeral Home in Delmont, which is in charge of the arrangements.
Fatur was a 19-year-old tail gunner on a B-17G Flying Fortress on a bombing mission near Glinica, Poland, on March 22, 1945, when it was shot down by German fighter planes, according to the agency. Lutz said the agency surmised Fatur may have been wounded and unable to put on his parachute, which would have given him the opportunity to bail out before the plane crashed.
Reports from survivors indicate that enemy fighters fired on the crew as they parachuted to the ground. Fatur was among eight members of the 10-man crew who did not survive. Two survivors were captured by German troops and later returned to U.S. custody, the agency said.
Fatur had been in the military barely a year when his plane was shot down, Lutz said. The family learned from the Defense Department that Fatur had volunteered for the mission to allow another airman from the Delmont-Slickville area to go home, she said.
The Fatur family learned he was missing when they received a government telegram. Lutz’s mother, Helen, was just 12 when he was reported missing, Lutz said.
“They (his parents Helen and John Fatur) never got over their grief” at losing their only son, Lutz said. “Mom knew her parents were consumed by their grief.”
Her grandmother, who ran a grocery store in Delmont with her grandfather, always believed he would be coming home someday, Lutz said.
Though he was missing, he was not forgotten, because the airman’s mother “really kept his memory alive” with his photograph in the house, Lutz said.
Growing up in Slickville, Fatur was such an accomplished ice skater that he auditioned for the Ice Capades and was offered a position with the touring troupe, but he opted for the military instead, Lutz said. That decision ultimately cost Fatur his life at age 19.
“He turned it down because he wanted to join the military and serve his country,” Lutz said.
In the decades since World War II, those of Stephen Fatur’s generation have passed, said Roy D. Fatur of Hempfield, one of the airman’s cousins. Roy Fatur was only about 4 years old when Stephen Fatur was declared missing and was too young to remember him.
Fatur and other crew members remained missing for decades, in part because of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The American Graves Registration Command searched for and disinterred the remains of U.S. servicemen in Europe, but investigations in the Soviet-occupied zone, including Poland, were severely limited, the POW/MIA Accounting Agency said.
Possible human remains at the crash site were uncovered during excavations from 2019 to 2024 by the agency in partnership with Alta Archaeological Consulting of Santa Rosa, California.
Lutz said that she and other relatives provided DNA samples to the military about 10 years ago.
“They (the agency) never give up. All over the world, they are looking for the missing soldiers,” Lutz said. “It’s all about the men and women who sacrificed. They need to come home.”