Henry Hilton Packard

PLYMOUTH --- Henry Hilton Packard was the son of Fred W. Packard and Sadie Y. Babcock Packard Sherwood. He was born on June 12, 1909, in Plymouth, NH. His father died of TB when he was an infant. He lived on Highland Street in Plymouth, NH, with his grandparents until his mother remarried Harry Sheldon Sherwood, and they moved west of Plymouth into a new home across from the 40-acre farm of Lyman and Carrie Sherwood on the Baker River. The home and the farm still stand in the valley overlooking Mt. Stinson. Harry, Hilton's stepfather, delivered fresh milk from his father's farm. His mother ran a tearoom next to their home. He grew up with one sister, Nelda Louise, and two brothers, Harry Sheldon and Rayburn Babcock Sherwood. Hilton graduated from Plymouth High School in 1926. Hilton attended some college and worked for some time in Boston, boarding at the Y.
Hilton enlisted in the Army Air Force in December 1940 and was stationed in the Philippines. The Philippines was attacked right after Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was captured and marched north to an infamous prison camp known as Cabanatuan. He was ill with possible malaria and dysentery. He died on September 17, 1943. Soldiers were buried there in mass graves and reinterred in a Manila Military Cemetery.
When DNA technology became available, soldiers from those graves were disinterred and identified by mitochondrial DNA from the female family line, dental records, and physical characteristics.
Henry "Hilton" Packard is now buried in the plot with his father, Fred W. Packard, in Riverside Cemetery in Plymouth, NH. His mother placed a granite stone there in the 1940s in his memory. His two brothers also served in the Pacific during WWII and returned to the US. His brother, Rayburn Sherwood, is buried on Anderson Island in Washington state. His brother, Sheldon, returned to New Hampshire and died in 1978. Nelda died in 2008.
It has been 82 years to the day since his death, and his remains are being interred as his mother would have wished.