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'Witching' workshop seems to confirm airman's resting place
McCOOK, Nebraska -- Genealogists Tom and Nancy Corey of McCook, Nebraska told those attending a dowsing or "witching" workshop Saturday that they don't know how or why dowsing or "witching" works to locate unmarked graves or to identify the sex of the person in the grave.
"We can't say how or why it works," Nancy said, "but it does work."
About 28 attended the workshop sponsored by the Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society of McCook.
Workshop participants "dowsed" the grave site marked for First Lt. Corvin Alstot, a B24 bombardier who was killed July 30, 1945, over Okinawa. Newspaper stories indicated that Alstot was buried with full military honors on Okinawa, and later moved to Memorial Cemetery.
Because it would have been unusual, and extremely expensive, for a family to have exhumed and moved a soldier's body after burial on foreign soil, Tom said, he and Nancy and other SWNGS members have wondered whether Alstot's body was actually reburied in Memorial Park. "The family may have needed that closure," Tom said.
The movement of dowsers' rods would indicate the likelihood that there is indeed a body buried in the grave marked for Lt. Alstot.
Alstot was a 1941 graduate of McCook Senior High, and a paperboy for the McCook Daily Gazette until his graduation. He studied accounting at the University of Nebraska until he was called into the service in February 1943.
In February 1945, Alstot was sent overseas to China, where he became a member of "The Flying Tigers." He was killed seven days after his 22nd birthday and two weeks before the end of World War II.
A Gazette news story indicates that the Rev. Carroll H. Prouty conducted services for First Lt. Alstot in the McCook cemetery. He was assisted by members of the VFW and American Legion.
First Lt. Alstot's pallbearers were his classmates: James Harr, Robert Smith, Richard Trosper, Wayne Poore, Wayne Chilcoat and Stewart Harrison.