Her brother died during World War II. Now 104, she finally has his dog tag.

When Dorothy Stewart was handed her brother’s dog tag, it had been 83 years since he had died in a training exercise during World War II.

“It’s unbelievable,” she said through tears.

Her older brother, Bernard Parnell, was killed at age 23 when he was serving as a Navy radioman. His plane crashed off the coast of Florida in 1943, and his body was never recovered.

“It’s bad enough to lose somebody, but if they don’t recover the body, it’s awful,” said Stewart, who was 21 at the time. “It was awful for my whole family.”

For more than eight decades, Stewart — who turns 105 in December — had no idea that one of her brother’s most personal belongings had ended up among military records in Beverly, Massachusetts, where she lives.

A dog tag on the wall

Ken McKay, assistant director of Beverly Veterans’ Services, came across a dog tag with the name Bernard Parnell five years ago.

McKay hung the dog tag from a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence in his office.

“It was a visual reminder,” McKay said, explaining he searched on and off for Parnell’s family for years, but struggled to find them because Parnell was from Arlington, Virginia, not Beverly.

Then, about two months ago, McKay found a report showing a 1972 headstone application for Parnell, submitted by his sister, Dorothy Stewart.

“I calculated her age to be 103 or 104,” McKay said. “Immediately, my first instinct was to look for an obituary.”

Instead, he came across articles about a Massachusetts woman who was a rowing champion. At 101, she set a world record time for her age group.

McKay was dumbfounded.

“Wait a second,” he recalled thinking. “If she’s rowing at 101, what are the odds she’s still alive?”

‘Nobody is more surprised than I am that I’ve lived this long’

McKay called the city clerk’s office, which had no death certificate for Stewart. Then he contacted the Greater Beverly YMCA, where she had been a member for 70 years and once worked as a fitness instructor. Staff confirmed she was alive. He also reached out to Paul Leighton, a local reporter who has written about Stewart.

McKay got in touch with Stewart’s daughter, and she arranged a conversation between them.

“She was absolutely elated,” McKay said. “This is the closest she’s been to her brother since he went into the service.”

McKay said he was shocked and grateful that Stewart was still alive to receive her brother’s dog tag.

“Nobody is more surprised than I am that I’ve lived this long,” Stewart said.

Stewart said she stopped rowing during the pandemic, and a hip fracture and surgery in March have made physical activity more difficult. But Stewart, whose husband died in 2010, credits her faith and no-nonsense attitude with carrying her through.

“I get up every morning happy,” Stewart said. “To have my later life so exciting from one thing to the next is just wonderful.”

On Sept. 29, the YMCA held a ceremony for Stewart to receive the dog tag. Friends and relatives gathered as the Beverly Veterans Advisory Committee presented it to her, mounted on a wooden plaque.

“It really is amazing,” Stewart said, adding that she plans to hang the plaque in her home.

Stewart grew up in Arlington and moved to Beverly with her late husband in 1954. She is the only surviving member of four siblings: a younger sister and two older brothers.

She still remembers when Parnell enlisted in 1941, just after the Pearl Harbor attack.

“I felt brokenhearted when he left,” she said. “He was a wonderful brother.”

Stewart said Parnell was a skilled swimmer and artist, and “very handsome.”

“The girls were always chasing him,” she said.

Stewart said the pilot was the crash’s only survivor, and that her family met him several times after the accident. He told them that Parnell had given him a life jacket as the plane went down.

“The pilot came and visited our home and told us all what happened,” she said.

Having the dog tag is bittersweet, Stewart said. In addition to her brother’s name and service number it has Parnell’s thumbprint.

The tag brought back painful memories, she said, but also happy ones. Her parents and siblings would have been deeply touched to know she has a piece of “Bernie,” as she calls him, back.

“They would be thrilled,” she said. “It really is amazing.”

McKay said returning military keepsakes is always worth the effort.

“Now people know who Bernard is,” he said.