WENDOVER, Nev. — Although Johnnie Franklin Callahan died in 1995, James William Dunn passed last May, and it's been 82 years since Isaiah Mays last drew breath, they rode into Utah on Friday, escorted by hundreds of reverent fans who'd never met them, never talked to them.
They didn't need to.
It's enough said that the three are U.S. military veterans, bound for a final resting place May 29 at Arlington National Cemetery, where full honors will be accorded.
The Honors at Arlington escort by the Missing in America Project is the first of its kind — in terms of scale, in terms of mission — to take dead U.S. veterans on a cross-country tour for recognition long denied.
"It is an incredible dream come true for me," said Patti Callahan, Johnnie Callahan's daughter. "I can't begin to tell you how much this means to my father."
Patti Callahan is riding escort for her father to Arlington, a place she has sought to have him buried since 1995. Johnnie Callahan was a World War II veteran who plucked a live Japanese bomb off the deck of a ship and threw it into the ocean, saving lives and later earning a Silver Star for his bravery.
"He always said he wanted to be buried there (Arlington) and have a 21-gun salute and I told him, 'I will do that, Daddy.'"
Now, the little girl who once tried to fit into her father's Navy uniform is wearing black leathers and climbing aboard a motorcycle for the first time in her life.
"I've had my dad since he died," she said, describing how she hung onto his ashes and the reason for the escort. "I haven't left him yet."
The escort by the Missing in America Project started Thursday in Sacramento and crossed into Utah Friday afternoon, where a change of command ceremony officially passed the escort duty to Utah groups all too willing to participate.
"This is a huge, huge deal. It means a lot to us and others in the organization. Some of us are veterans and some of us are not," said Bill Roop, spokesman for the POW/MIA Organization of Utah. "But we all take a lot of pride in our veterans and we want to do the best we can to make sure that everyone gets the honors they have earned and rightfully should get. It's not about us."
It was on Friday, and is until May 29, about Callahan, Dunn and Mays — riding in urns on the back of a custom-designed "bike of love" sporting a buffalo head in the front and bear rug draped over the back.
The precious cargo is being maneuvered across country by "Indian Dave," who was parked behind the handlebars of the unorthodox hearse at a truck stop in Tooele County.
"I am honored. It is a fantastic thing," he said, emotionally. "Let's just put it this way: I have to keep a crying towel in my bag up front."
A member of the Cherokee tribe, Indian Dave said the spirit of the ride is catching on as the miles roll under the wheels across California, Nevada, and now Utah.
It is the spirit of Mays, a Buffalo Soldier who was shot during an 1889 ambush in Arizona while he defended a military payroll equivalent to $1 million today during an attempted robbery. Wounded in both legs, he walked and crawled two miles for help and was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Denied a government pension, he later died in an Arizona hospital and was resurrected by federal court order from the All Souls pauper grave so he could join the escort.
Or the spirit of Dunn, who was a combat medic in Vietnam where his base was overrun and he ferried the wounded to safety — doctoring them to life — while risking his own. He later went on to foster more than 200 children before his death.
Although Callahan is making the journey with his daughter, the overarching mission of the Missing in America Project is just that — to identify and locate the remains of forgotten veterans sitting on shelves in mortuaries across the country.
Just shy of three years old, the organization has already identified the remains of more than 500 veterans and facilitated the interment of close to 400.
Then, there was this ride, which one organizer said has taken on a life of its own.
"Everyone wants to help and be part of it," said Bud Thieme, one of the four founding members of the project, describing the biker escorts, the people traveling in cars and vans and trucks and the communities hosting parades and picnics when they roll into town.
And they are remembering the ones once forgotten.
"If they are left on a shelf they are left behind," he said.
Today, the escort will pull into Colorado, where another escort of bikers, cars and caravans will help Callahan and Dunn and Mays across the state into Kansas. And so on and so on into Indiana and into West Virginia, and finally, Washington, D.C., and Arlington National Cemetery.
As Kurt Falkner, head of the Utah POW/MIA group, said, "It's the least that we can do."
For more information on the ride across America, as well as a detailed map, visit miap.us.
E-MAIL: amyjoi@desnews.com