Richard Davis Funeral Homes

Edgar Felton Davis returned to North Carolina on Thursday to be buried next to his wife.His remains arrived to a hero's welcome at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on an American Airlines flight from Dallas. Water cannons from two RDU fire trucks arched over the plane as it pulled up to the gate, where a six-member honor guard from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base waited. About 130 motorcycles, members of the N.C. Patriot Guard Riders, escorted the hearse to Goldsboro, where Davis will be buried Friday with full military honors at the Eastern Carolina State Veterans Cemetery, under the flight path for the Air Force base.Martha Sue Davis did not live long enough to welcome her husband home, but their three children were there, among about 20 family members who stood in the shadow of the Airbus jet's wing while his flag-covered coffin emerged from the cargo hold.Col. Edgar Felton DavisBorn and raised in Goldsboro, Davis graduated from N.C. State University in 1958 just before joining the Air Force.He was 32 and a navigator on a night photo reconnaissance mission over Laos when the RF-4C Phantom fighter-bomber was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery on Sept. 17, 1968. The pilot ejected and was later rescued, but Davis was declared missing in action when efforts to find him or the plane failed.Davis was later declared dead, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which announced Jan. 18 that Davis had been found.According to the agency, a joint U.S. and Laotian team visited a crash site thought to be his plane six times between 2001 and 2015, but did not turn up any human remains.Then, in 2015, the Defense Intelligence Agency received a tip from a Laotian man who said his father had come across the remains of a U.S. pilot in 1968 and buried them near his house. The man turned over bone fragments, which the POW/MIA agency identified as Davis using DNA that matched his family.The remains of Col. Edgar Felton Davis, who was shot down over Laos in 1968, received a hero's welcome at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Thursday. He will be b... (News & Observer)