Tulie Chastain Swilling refused to believe her father was dead when military officials told her family his bomber had crashed during World War II.

“They didn’t know if the plane had gone into the water or not,” she said of the B-24D Liberator aircraft her father, Staff Sgt. Berthold A. Chastain, and 11 other U.S. Army Air Corp airmen were flying on Oct. 27, 1943, during a reconnaissance mission. “I had always pictured in my mind that it had gone down in a jungle-type atmosphere and the jungle had overgrown it.”

Swilling’s vision was correct. Last fall, Chastain’s remains were discovered on the South Pacific island of New Guinea and identified by DNA testing after a search for the crew that stretched over decades.

A Whitfield County native, Chastain will be coming home to Georgia Saturday. He will be escorted from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport by a convoy of Patriot Guard Riders from Tennessee and Georgia. They will shepherd Chastain’s remains up I-75, exit at Rocky Face and traverse the North Bypass en route to Cleveland, Tenn., where a funeral will be held Wednesday. Swilling lives in Birchwood, Tenn., which is near Cleveland.

Swilling was 7 years old when her father died, and recollections of him are distant.

“I saw him for the last time before he went off for basic training,” she said, thinking the year was 1941. “He told me he would come and see me every time he got leave, but things were different then. Gas was being rationed and public transportation was used for moving troops. He never came home on leave.”

But she said her dad wrote her — his only child — often.

“My grandmother saved those letters, and I still have them,” she said. “I also have some of his poems he wrote before he went into the service. The poems were sad because of things that happened when he grew up, about beggars and hard times. His mom raised five boys alone, and took care of her mother, and never complained.”

Swilling, 75, said she barely remembers the times with her father growing up in the Mitchell Bridge Road area of Dawnville, but believes her father lived in the old Crown Cotton Mill area north of Dalton when tragedy struck.

“His father was killed there by a train while taking produce to Dalton, on the day his youngest brother was born,” she said.

Swilling said she not only had “day dreams” of her dad, but vivid fantasies at night.

“When my dad died, I did not believe he was dead,” she began. “I was a little child and couldn’t register that. But when they called, that’s when I grieved because I knew he was gone. All these years I thought it was possible he could be alive. I dreamed he was living in this area and nobody told me. I was angry at all those lost years. But it all came to a close when they called me.”

That call produced the “strangest feelings” she’s ever known.

“It was relief and happiness, but also grief,” she shared. “A friend who is like an adopted son said to me, ‘Don’t cry and weep and mourn at his funeral — don’t let that take away from the joy of him coming home.’”

Local Patriot Guard member Roger Rhodes said the riders, who “show our respect for our fallen heroes,” were contacted after family members learned the long-awaited news.

“We only become involved as invited guests,” he said. “Then we start putting together our support. If they want a flag line, we’ll put that together. If they want an escort or whatever. The more we got to researching the bigger this puzzle got to be.”

Rhodes said Chastain’s disappearance and eventual location are not only intriguing to local residents along the Georgia-Tennessee border, but appears to be attracting a lot of attention elsewhere.

“Law enforcement officers — the Georgia State Patrol, sheriff’s offices in Fulton County, Cobb County, Bartow County, Cherokee County, the Atlanta Police Department and the airport authority are providing assistance also,” he said. “The Whitfield County (sheriff’s office) will hand off to Tennessee law enforcement officers at state line.

Kim Randolph of Ralph Buckner Funeral Home in Cleveland said a Delta jet bearing Chastain’s remains will touch down at Atlanta from Honolulu at 7:15 a.m.

“We’ll have a traditional funeral (on Wednesday) with a military flyover at 1:40 p.m. at the conclusion of the service here at the funeral home,” he said. “He’ll be buried in McIngurff Cemetery in Birchwood. Ms. Swilling wanted to bring him home and be with her after all these years.”

The funeral is open to the public. The funeral home is at 3000 Ralph Buckner Blvd. N.E. in Cleveland.