11-270 Garand Picture of the Day

[Mark in Rochester]

AKRON, Ohio — A mystery that was decades in the making ended with just one glance.

The daughter of the World War II Marine took one look at her computer screen and recognized him.

"Oh, my God, that is my dad," said Becky Thursby Cardarella.

She knew right away that the man in the iconic black-and-white photo was her father, Marine Pfc. Gerald Paul Thursby Sr., crouching next to another Marine during the battle of Peleliu on Sept. 15, 1944.

Historians have been working to identify her father. All they had had to go on was a caption that identified the man in the photo as Pfc. Gerald Churchby of Akron.

But historians were stumped, because they could not find any Marine named Churchby who lived in Akron.

The other Marine was correctly identified as Pfc. Douglas Lightheart, who died in Michigan in 2006 at the age of 86.

The Akron Beacon Journal ran an article in August laying out the mystery and asking for help in finding Churchby.

Jason McDonald, the Web master for a World War II multimedia database, wanted to settle once and for all who was Churchby, whose photograph is now in the National Archives.

This week, three months after the story was published, McDonald said he was contacted by Michael Conrad, who had found the name "Gerald Thursby" on Ancestry.com.