WAHPETON - Fifty-seven years after Pvt. Joseph Meyer Jr. disappeared while fighting in the Korean War, the U.S. Army has told his family his remains will be coming home.

Meyer was 17 when he left Wahpeton to enlist in the Army. He was declared missing in action in 1950, with few clues offered to his family.

His sisters remember their red-haired, freckle-faced brother as straight-laced and well-liked. He liked to play football, but decided to enlist in the Army rather than stay in school.

About 10 years ago, two of his sisters submitted DNA samples to the Army.

"I didn't think it would do any good," said one of the sisters, Alice Pausch. "At that point, I had lost hope already."

They heard little, until Alice and her husband, Virgil, received a phone message at their farm home southwest of Wahpeton last week saying the Army had information for them.

They learned Meyer's remains were found with no identification in a mass grave in North Korea.

The Pausches were told that 87 percent of Meyer's skeletal remains were recovered, including his skull and some of his teeth. "A miracle," Virgil Pausch said.

"That's unreal. That's just amazing," Alice Pausch said. "It's a positive match. He had no dog tags or nothing. If we hadn't given the blood sample, we would have never known."

Meyer's family was not told how he died. The Army is releasing few details, saying paperwork has not been completed.

"It's a pending identification," Army spokeswoman Shari Lawrence said. Army representatives plan to visit Meyer's oldest sister, Emma Wolfe, next week, Alice Pausch said.

"It's not that often that we bring anyone home from Korea," Lawrence said.

Meyer's family got the news Feb. 29, a few days after another Wahpeton native, Master Sgt. Woodrow Wilson Keeble, received the Medal of Honor from President Bush for his bravery in Korea. Keeble died in 1982.

"He was a great guy," Virgil Pausch said of Keeble. "I would always see him running the streets of Wahpeton."

Meyer was the only boy in a family of four. Besides, Alice, 79, the other sisters are Rose Moore, 77, of Doran, Minn., and Wolfe, 80, of St. Maries, Idaho. Their father, Joseph K. Meyer, died in 1962, and their mother, Clara, died in 1971.

Moore said she was shocked to find out her brother's remains had been found.

"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" she said.

Alice Pausch still has the last letter her brother wrote from combat on Oct. 9, 1950, saying he hoped to see his young nieces and nephews when he came home.

Pausch said she believes it was her mother who signed off on the enlistment form, allowing her brother to join the Army at age 17. "I don't know if both my parents had to (sign the form), but I know my mother did," she said.

In his last letter to Moore, Meyer asked if she would bake him a birthday cake.

"He was a good kid. He was my kid brother," she said.

The remains are scheduled to be flown home from Hawaii a few days before Meyer's funeral, scheduled for May 3. He will be buried with full military honors in a 2008 Army uniform.

Alice Pausch said she is planning the ceremony with pride.

"It's closure," she said. "After all these years, now we know."