Dennis Owen tracks down fallen friend's sisters to return Army ring

Fallbrook senior Dennis Owen will soon be returning a ring given to him by a friend killed in the Korean War to the family of his fallen friend.

Owen tracked down two sisters of Art Arveson and will be sending the ring by certified mail to one of the sisters who lives in Fort Mojave, Arizona. Darlene Savoie now lives in Fort Mojave year-round while Donna Elliott splits time between Fort Mojave and Brinnon, Washington.

“It really means a lot to the family to get that ring back,” Elliott said.

Art Arveson and Dennis Owen both grew up in Bremerton, Washington. There were twelve Arveson children, although the oldest passed away in infancy. Art Arveson was the second of those twelve children. Five of the seven girls and three of the five boys are still living.

Donna was the fifth of the twelve children and was about twelve when her brother was killed in action. She remembers Art taking his sisters on his paper route and to the movies. “He was a real good big brother,” she said.

Darlene was the sixth of the twelve siblings and was ten years old when Art was killed. “I remember him putting me on a piggyback ride when we went to the movies,” she said. “He was a good brother.”

Elliott had more childhood memories of Owen than Savoie. “I don’t remember Dennis,” Savoie said. “I was too young when Arthur went in.”

Elliott was about ten or eleven when her brother joined the service. She remembers that Owen and her brother also had a friend named Bob Sanders. “They tried to join the service together,” Elliott said.

At the time the armed forces had a “buddy system” where friends could enlist together and be assigned to the same unit. Sanders and Arveson joined the Army together. Owen was a year and a half younger and had to wait to enlist in the military.

Arveson was in the 29th Regiment, and he sent Owen a ring with a regimental crest. Owen kept the ring safe for Arveson, but the ring was in a safer place than the soldier.

The Korean War began in June 1950. Arveson was killed in mid-September in the Puson perimeter.

“He was due to come home and his buddy, Bob, was on the front lines and he delayed coming home,” Elliott said. “He was going to wait for his buddy to come back.”

Before Sanders could return, fighting broke out. Arveson’s return to the United States was cancelled and he was sent to the front lines.

“I remember that a taxi came,” Elliott said. “Somebody came up in uniform, got out of the taxi, and told my mom that Arthur had been killed over there.”

Arveson had been in the Army approximately two years when he was killed.

“I don’t remember ever seeing Denny or Bob after that,” Elliott said. “I never kept in touch with Denny or Bob Sanders.”

Owen joined the Marine Corps the following April and spent three years in the Marines. He went to Camp Pendleton for boot camp and also had a later assignment at Camp Pendleton. “I never dreamt that I’d wind up at the back gate to the base, that I’d be this close to the Marine Corps after all these years,” said Owen, who lives in the western part of Fallbrook. “I hear them training. I hear the machine guns and what have you over there.”

After boot camp Owen was sent to Pickle Meadows near Reno before deployment to Korea. He returned to Camp Pendleton after his Korea tour of duty and was then stationed in Hawaii and Japan prior to his discharge.

Owen’s family purchased property in Rainbow in 1954. He lived in Rainbow prior to moving to Fallbrook, and he has lived in Fallbrook since 1961.

Owen keeps in touch with some of the Marines with whom he served and attends Marine Corps reunions. At the end of this month he will be traveling to Philadelphia for a First Marine Division reunion.

He lost touch with the Arveson family but kept Arveson’s ring in a desk for decades. “I had that thing all this time. It’s amazing I didn’t lose it,” he said.

About three years ago Owen, who is now 74, decided to return the ring to the Arveson family. “There’s some things you’d better do. If you don’t do them, you’re going to run out of time to get them done,” Owen said. “I knew it would have a great deal of value for those girls. It was their big brother’s.”

(The three surviving Arveson boys, along with the youngest sister, were born after Owen lost touch with the Arveson family, so Owen was unaware that Arveson had any brothers.)

Owen still has family in Washington, and when he visited the Bremerton area three years ago he went to the county records department to research marriage records from 1955 and later. “I knew that his little sisters, if we added five years, they’d be 18 or older,” Owen said. “Lo and behold there was a Donna Arveson.”

Donna Arveson had married into the Seamann family. “Then it was a question of going back to the phone book,” Owen said.

Owen found a Seamann in the Bremerton phone directory. He was told that Donna was living in Arizona and was given a phone number.

“Last year out of the blue Denny called,” Elliott said. “I knew who he was as soon as he said his name.”

“I called to make contact with her and went out to find the ring and couldn’t find it,” Owen said.

Owen had moved the ring to a safe, and later he looked through some Marine Corps items in the safe and found the ring, enabling him to follow through with Arveson’s sister. “Then when I tried calling her on the number she had given me, no Donna,” Owen said. “I wrote letters and they came back.”

Donna’s address was on Blackfoot Road in Fort Mojave, Arizona, so Owen began contacting residents of that street to inquire about Donna’s whereabouts. He contacted Savoie, who also lives on Blackfoot Road across the street from Elliott.

“He didn’t even know that we were sisters,” Savoie said. “I guess he didn’t know that we lived next to each other.”

Savoie informed Owen that her sister returns to Washington in the summer (Fort Mojave is in northwest Arizona, close to Laughlin and Needles) and gave Owen a phone number with a 360 area code. Owen, who also learned Donna’s new last name, contacted Elliott on August 6.

“When he called and talked to me, I was just surprised to hear from him,” Elliott said.

“Out of the blue when he called; I was amazed,” Elliott said. “You can track about anybody down, I guess.”

“I’ve gone through hours and hours trying to find these people,” Owen said.

“We never knew anything about the ring,” Savoie said. “We never even knew that one existed.”

“We’re just very pleased that this all came about,” Elliott said. “We were very excited about it.”

Elliott advised Owen to send the ring to Savoie.

“I’m just really grateful that he thought about us,” Savoie said. “It’s been years, and I’d like to meet him one of these days.”

“That’s really unselfish of him,” Elliott said. “He must really have cherished this ring all these years to have held on to it.”

Elliott plans to keep in touch with Owen. Over the years and moves the sisters have also lost photographs of their brother, and Owen also plans to send any photographs of Arveson he finds to Elliott and Savoie.

“It’s just a wonderful thing,” Elliott said. “I just can’t thank Denny enough for doing this.”

“It gives me a feeling of having accomplished something to see that those girls got their brother’s – their big brother’s – ring,” Owen said.