News

Remains of Luther Rhodes, a Marine casualty at Guadalcanal, coming home

Marvin Rhodes and his wife, Barbara, sit in their Edneyville home with the documents they collected over the years in their search for the remains of Marvin’s brother, Luther.

By AMY B. MCCRAW, Published: October 7, 2025

Marvin Rhodes lost hope a few years ago that he would ever find the remains of his brother, Luther, who died fighting the Japanese in World War II.

Years of hitting dead ends each time he tried to find out what happened to his brother’s body after his death on Guadalcanal in 1942 had finally worn Marvin Rhodes down. He decided a couple of years ago he needed to stop looking for answers.

Then one day in September, the phone rang.

“I usually don’t answer. There are so many spam calls,” the 83-year-old Edneyville resident said. “For some reason, I answered it.”

The call was from a representative of the government’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, and the voice on the other end gave Marvin the news he had waited his entire life to hear.

“He just told me that my brother’s remains had been identified,” Marvin said.

Marvin and his wife, Barbara, said they were shocked — and they remember that it was exactly at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on Sept. 3 when they heard the news: Luther’s remains were located in Honolulu.

Luther Rhodes was 17 and looked younger when he joined the Marines in November 1941. His fellow soldiers called him ‘the Kid’ or ‘Dusty’ Rhodes. Luther died fighting the Japanese on Guadalcanal in 1942. “He sat there and cried. We both cried,” Barbara said.

Marvin never knew his brother, Luther.

Luther was the fourth child in a family of 10 siblings — five boys and five girls — who grew up in Edneyville.

Marvin was the baby of the family and not yet born when Luther, at the

age of 17, persuaded his father to sign the paper that would allow him to join the U.S. Marine Corps on Nov. 11, 1941 — 26 days before Pearl Harbor.

* * * 

Luther Leru “Dusty” Rhodes was a private first class when he was killed less than a year later, on Oct. 7, 1942, fighting in the battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands — 83 years ago this week. The battle was America’s first offensive of the war in the Pacific.

Marvin was just six months old when his brother died.

The loss of Luther was so devasting that his parents, Harley and Lexine Rhodes, almost never talked about Luther or his death in the war, Marvin said. But they did try to locate their son’s remains.

In a handwritten letter to the commandant of the Marine Corps in 1946, Harley and Lexine expressed their deep sorrow that Luther’s body had not been identified “as we hope to have his body returned to his beloved land the USA for his final resting place.”

In the letter, the grieving parents also asked that they be notified if any information was ever obtained about the location of their son’s body.

Luther Rhodes joined the U.S. Marine Corps on Nov. 11, 1941, with 14 other young men. He is circled in the photograph taken before the recruits shipped out to Parris Island, S.C., for boot camp.A board of the American Graves Registration Service in 1949 deemed that the remains of Luther Roads were non-recoverable. The agency’s investigation determined that Luther was killed in action at the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal on Oct. 7, 1942, and buried in the First Marine Division Cemetery on the island. But when the cemetery was searched, Luther’s remains were not found, according to a record of the graves registration service proceeding.

Marvin, who served as an Army captain from 1966-1970, was able to devote time to searching for his brother’s remains after he retired in 2005 and moved back to Edneyville and settled in the home where he grew up.

“After I retired, that gave me time to think about stuff like that,” Marvin said.

 He spent several years looking for any information he could find about what happened to his brother’s body.

Marvin attended annual meetings the DPAA held across the southeast and contacted anyone else he thought might be able to help.

He even submitted his DNA to the DPAA in 2013 to assist with the identification of recovered remains.

Nothing ever turned up.

A couple of years ago, Marvin decided to stop searching after he saw current photographs of the area on Guadalcanal where Luther was killed.

Luther Rhodes and his fellow Marines in 1942 were met in Guadalcanal with a dense jungle teeming with malaria-infected mosquitos and enemy soldiers.

But the photographs Marvin saw that were taken of Guadalcanal in recent years showed a densely developed area teeming with people, buildings and vehicles. The images left Marvin skeptical that any progress could be made in finding out what happened to his brother.

“I said, ‘There is no way they are going to get remains there,’” he said.

* * * 

Not too long after Marvin gave up on locating his brother’s remains, leaders at Hendersonville’s Hedrick-Rhodes VFW Post 5206 decided to take on an effort to locate the 13 soldiers from Henderson County who were missing in action during World War II.

Luther Rhodes was the first MIA they decided to try to locate.

Bob Johnson, a retired U.S. Army major and commander at Hendersonville’s Hedrick-Rhodes VFW Post 5206, stands next to the post’s Wall of Honor for members of the military from Henderson County.Bob Johnson, a retired U.S. Army major and commander of the VFW post, said the circumstances and location of Luther Rhodes’s death gave him hope the remains could be found.

Unlike some MIAs who were lost at sea during Navy battles or died in plane crashes in remote mountains, quite a bit was known about Luther’s death on the battlefield, Johnson noted. Records and first-hand accounts revealed crucial information about where the Marine private died and what happened to his body immediately after.

“I woke up one day in June and said to myself, ‘I’m going to find Luther,’” Johnson recalled.

After talking with Marvin and looking over the records the younger brother had accumulated over the years, Johnson realized that the 1949 investigation into Luther’s remains and two books that included information about his death contained important clues.

Both the investigation and the books indicated that Luther’s body was initially identified and buried on Guadalcanal.

 In the 2004 book On The Canal: The Marines of L/3/5 on Guadalcanal, 1942, Ore J. Marion describes the reaction of Luther’s fellow Marines when they learned the friend they called “The Kid” and “Dusty” had died one night while fighting the Japanese.

“Gerkin choked up and let out a sob. There in front of us, in the midst of all the dead and wounded, two men from the 2nd Platoon were rolling Dusty onto a poncho,” according to the book. “Gerkin pulled himself together and went directly to the two men who were getting ready to take the kid’s body away. He said to them, ‘Don’t drop that kid while you’re moving him in that poncho. Don’t bump him on the ground, or I’ll kick the shit out of both of you.’”

The 2019 book Leaving Mac Behind: The Lost Marines of Guadalcanal also mentions Luther Rhodes and the correspondence between his parents and the Marine Corps.

* * * 

The Marines buried in a cemetery on Guadalcanal were eventually moved to other locations, with “knowns” sent home and “unknowns” shipped to military facilities in the Philippines and Hawaii, Johnson said.

Johnson, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, knew from his previous work with the military resolving gravestone errors at Arlington National Cemetery that sometimes records do not match headstones at military cemeteries, leaving questions about the identity of bodies.

“It really got me attuned to research. I knew with enough research you could find something,” he said. “It made me think, ‘They can find this guy.’”

Johnson had a hunch that the body of Luther Rhodes was mistakenly deemed to be an “unknown” when the bodies of Marines were moved from the cemetery on Guadalcanal.

He thought that if the DPAA looked among the remains of soldiers from Guadalcanal held in Hawaii and the Philippines, they would find Luther Rhodes. Johnson just needed to convince the DPAA to prioritize the search.

 He got his chance a short time later when he met over the summer with Kye Laughter, the regional director for U.S. Sen. Ted Budd.

“I had a whole packet on the research I had done on Luther. He looks over and says, ‘I know him. He’s my great uncle,’” Johnson recalled.

Shortly after Johnson’s meeting with Laughter, Budd’s office opened an official inquiry under the DPAA  into the remains of Luther Rhodes on behalf of the VFW.

“We are deeply grateful to DPAA for their extraordinary work and unwavering commitment to our nation’s heroes,” a written statement from the senator’s office said. “After decades of uncertainty, the Rhodes family — and the Edneyville community — will finally be able to welcome Luther home and honor his sacrifice on American soil.”

Laughter said he was happy he had a hand in helping to locate his great-great-uncle Luther’s remains after so many years.

“It’s wonderful news for the whole family and our community and I am especially happy for Marvin,” he said, adding that his grandmother was named after Luther’s middle name, Leru. “It is great to have that closure and know Luther is coming home.”  

* * * 

The fact that Laughter was related to Luther Rhodes made finding his remains especially meaningful.

“Our office stands ready to assist any constituent in North Carolina who needs help navigating requests to the DPAA, DOD or any other federal agency. It is our honor to serve those who have served our nation,” the senator’s office said. “There are still thousands of American service members who remain missing in action around the world. We owe it to them — and to their families — to continue the mission, to never stop searching and to bring every one of them home.”

Johnson said he agrees that all the soldiers who remain missing in action need to be found.

“The ethos of the military is to leave no man behind,” he said. “They left these men behind. They need to go get them.”

The retired Army major, who was also instrumental in the founding of the Wall of Honor tribute to veterans at the renovated VFW post at Five Points, intends to continue his work finding the other Henderson County soldiers missing in World War II.

His next efforts will probably focus on Brack McCraw, who served in the Army Air Corps, and Thomas Howard, who served in the Army. Both men died as prisoners of war in the Philippines.

* * * 

Marvin said representatives from the DPAA are expected to come to Edneyville next month to give him more information about exactly how and where his brother’s remains were found.

“I just want them to tell me what transpired. Where were they? That’s been 83 years ago,” he said.

Marvin said he hopes to have the remains returned home in the coming months and possibly have a funeral involving the Marine Corps in the spring.

Luther’s remains will be buried at Edneyville United Methodist Church, where his parents, two sisters and other brothers are buried. A marker is currently located at the cemetery in memory of Luther.

Marvin said he is sure that if his parents, brothers and sisters were still alive they would be thanking God that Luther is finally coming home.

“They all missed him,” he said. “They would have been amazed like everyone else that something like that comes up after 83 years.”

* * * * *

Next month Johnson will talk about Luther Rhodes and the other soldiers from Henderson County who went missing in World War II during a presentation at the Henderson County Public Library. “Twelve Didn’t Come Home: The Story of Henderson County’s MIAs” will be held at 2 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 10, in the Kaplan Auditorium at the library.