BYU Students Help Find the Families of Missing U.S. Service Members

For most family history students, the job is to go back as many generations as the records allow. For a team at Brigham Young University in Provo, the work runs the other direction: start with a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who never came home, and find the closest relatives living today. BYU News reported Tuesday, Nov. 10, on the eve of Veterans Day, that students at the BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy have spent close to a decade helping the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) track down the families of missing service members, and that the research has now contributed to seven cases in which remains were returned home. FOX13 reported the story the same day.

How the research works

According to BYU News, DPAA has sent individual deceased personnel files for lost service members to the center since 2017. Student teams then research each service member's family to identify the legal next of kin, along with relatives who may be eligible to provide DNA samples. Those are not always the same people, which is part of why the agency needs genealogists.

The students are mostly Family History majors. BYU News describes the major as unique to BYU and says the university is the only one in the country with an academic family history research center on campus. Students sometimes go through hundreds of records for a single case, including birth, marriage and death records, historical newspapers and other public records, to build a family tree and find the descendants.

Some of those records are in other languages. BYU News named Czech, German and French, and said the university draws on students and staff who learned languages abroad or on missions.

The center's website describes the approach as "traditional genealogical research as well as basic DNA concepts" used "to identify living next of kin and potential DNA donors for each soldier." It says more than 80,000 military men and women remain missing from the country's wars going back to World War II.

A 2018 BYU News story said some cases took three hours and others three weeks, and that students finish each one with a report listing potential DNA donors and the relatives' contact information.

From a family tree to a DNA match

BYU News laid out what happens after the students finish. Once legal next of kin and potential DNA donors are identified, Claudia Sudweeks, the DPAA Research Partner Fellow on the project and a BYU adjunct history researcher, contacts them to confirm their relationship to the service member and to ask whether potential donors are willing to give a DNA sample. The appropriate service casualty office then sends a DNA kit to eligible donors.

When possible remains are recovered, the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, part of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, compares the donor's DNA with DNA extracted from the remains to see whether they match.

The Defense Health Agency, which oversees that lab, says the Defense Department and the military services have been collecting maternal family reference specimens since 1992 from relatives of personnel whose remains are unrecovered or unidentified from World War II, Korea, Southeast Asia and Cold War incidents.

"The process feels like detective work - it's a big puzzle, and every family's different," Sudweeks told BYU News. She said family members frequently express gratitude that their loved ones are remembered, and that the project "offers hope and the possibility of finally receiving answers decades after their soldier has been lost."

Two lieutenants, one mission

BYU News highlighted one of the seven returned cases. Lt. Blaine Wilcox and Lt. Edgar W. Nevois were killed on the same World War II mission in 1944, a bombing run on an oil refinery in Politz, Germany. Their aircraft was hit by intense anti-aircraft fire. Nearly 80 years later, with the help of BYU's research and DNA testing, DPAA positively identified their remains, and they were returned to their families and buried with full military honors.

What the students say

Megan Smith, a Family History senior on the project, told BYU News the work is different. "In most family history projects, we're researching back as far as we can go. But here we're researching to find the next of kin of the service member who died," she said. She also told the university, in a line FOX13 used as well, that "I feel pretty lucky to be able to work on this project where I'm making a difference - not just for people who have already died, but also for living people who didn't know about their military family members."

Molly Petersen, also a senior on the project, said: "We are finding people with ancestors that have been lost to these wars, and we're helping give hope that these soldiers may be exhumed and returned at some point. We don't know when, but we definitely are helping them remember their family."

A director with a missing relative of her own

Suzanne Adams, whom BYU News identifies as director of the BYU Family History Center and DPAA Principal Investigator, has her own stake in the work. Her grandfather's brother, Richard Harris, is among the missing, and she learned she was an eligible DNA donor.

"This project is so special for me because it means that somebody still cares about what happened to my great-uncle," Adams told BYU News. "We still feel that loss and it is really amazing to be involved in this project where you can see that these people are not forgotten."

The Daily Herald, in a September 2025 piece on the project, described Second Lt. Richard E. Harris as a World War II service member in the Pacific who has been unaccounted for since the Japanese ship Shinyo Maru sank on Sept. 7, 1944, off Mindanao in the Philippines. The Herald reported that about 650 prisoners of war died in that sinking.

If your family has a missing service member

This is the part that matters most for a Utah County family that has a relative who never came home. A DNA sample on file is what allows a match if remains are found.

• Register with DPAA. BYU News says families still waiting for answers can use dpaa.mil to register as next of kin and submit photos or records of the missing service member. FOX13 also pointed families to the DPAA website. (Our reporter could not load dpaa.mil directly while preparing this story, so go to the site's Families section for the current forms and instructions.)
• Confirm a DNA reference sample is on file. The U.S. Army, in a December 2024 article about its Past Conflicts Repatriation Branch at Fort Knox, Kentucky, said one ongoing challenge is a lack of DNA reference samples from families of those still unaccounted for, and that anyone related to an unaccounted-for service member should contact that service's casualty office to confirm a sample is on file.
• Know which office to call. Each branch runs its own casualty office. The Defense Health Agency's DNA operations page lists these numbers: Army, 1-800-892-2490; Navy, 1-800-443-9298; Marine Corps, 1-800-847-1597; Air Force, 1-800-531-5501. Confirm them on dpaa.mil or the branch's own site before you rely on them, since government contact lists change.
• Attend a Family Member Update. BYU News says DPAA holds these several times a year, giving families updated information on individual cases and on investigation or recovery efforts. Check dpaa.mil for upcoming dates.
• Gather documents. Our guide to vital records in Utah County explains how to request birth, death and marriage certificates that show how relatives connect.

The Army article puts the scale in perspective: it counted over 37,000 Americans unaccounted for from World War II, a little over 5,000 from Korea and a little over 500 from Vietnam. After an identification, the Army said, a representative of its branch visits the family for a briefing with a case book covering the battle, medical, dental and DNA reports and how the remains were recovered.

The center itself

The Center for Family History and Genealogy is housed in BYU's History Department, the Daily Herald reported. Its website lists other public projects, including the Immigrant Ancestors Project and script tutorials for reading old handwriting, and says its mission includes providing online research and resources for public use at no cost. Its office is at 1031 Joseph F. Smith Building, Provo, phone 801-422-1968. For your own research, see our guide to family history centers in Utah Valley.

Veterans Day in Utah County

Veterans Day is today, Wednesday, Nov. 11. Our UVU Veterans Week and Veterans Day roundup lists the ceremonies, closures and campus events around the county. For help with benefits, claims and health care, see our veterans services guide for Utah County. For more on campus, see our BYU hub.

This report is based on BYU News (Nov. 10, 2026, and June 20, 2018), FOX13 (Nov. 10, 2026), the BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy website, the Daily Herald (Sept. 26, 2025), the U.S. Army (Dec. 23, 2024) and the Defense Health Agency's DOD DNA Operations page, all checked Nov. 11, 2026. ABC4 also reported the story on Nov. 10; its page and dpaa.mil could not be loaded for this report.

Related Guides

• UVU Veterans Week and Veterans Day 2026
• Veterans Services in Utah County
• Family History Centers in Utah Valley
• Family History in Utah Valley: Beyond the FamilySearch Library
• The Genealogy Industry in Utah Valley
• Memorial Day in Utah Valley
• Provo City Cemetery