STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — More than 75 years after he was reported missing in Korea, 1st Lt. Raymond Banker Gilbert is coming home to Steubenville, where visitation and funeral services are set for Saturday, November 14, according to Vinson Mortuary, LLC, which is handling arrangements.
Gilbert, formerly of 410 Grant Street in Steubenville, was born April 26, 1927, to Joseph and Nanie Flate Gilbert, graduated from Steubenville High School — Big Red — in the Class of 1944, earned a business degree at West Virginia University and then joined the U.S. Army as an officer, according to Vinson Mortuary, LLC.
He served with Battery B, 503rd Field Artillery Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, during the Korean War, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s official service-member profile, corroborated by Vinson Mortuary, LLC. On December 1, 1950, he was reported missing in action after being wounded and captured by enemy forces during his unit’s withdrawal from Kunu-ri to Sunchon, North Korea, during the Battle of the Ch’ongch’on River, the DPAA profile said.
Through witness statements from repatriated American prisoners of war, the Army determined Gilbert died of his wounds as a prisoner of war on January 31, 1951, in the vicinity of Mining Camp, a POW camp, according to the DPAA official profile, corroborated by Vinson Mortuary, LLC. After the war, remains recovered near Kunu-ri were returned to U.S. custody in 1954 as part of Operation Glory, the exchange of war dead, and the unidentified remains were buried as an Unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, the DPAA profile said.
That long uncertainty ended in the laboratory. On July 1, 2024, the remains were disinterred and sent to a DPAA laboratory for scientific testing, and based on laboratory analysis and circumstantial and historical evidence they were identified as Gilbert’s, with DPAA officially announcing the identification on June 4, 2026, according to the DPAA official profile, corroborated by Vinson Mortuary, LLC. Gilbert is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, and his name is inscribed on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., the DPAA profile said.
Steubenville City Council was briefed on the homecoming at its October 20 session, in a citizen presentation reported by Strong Towns Steubenville, which said Gilbert’s niece Alisa Gilbert will be at the November service and that he will arrive back in Steubenville via an honorable military escort and be buried in Union Cemetery. He was preceded in death by four brothers and two sisters and is survived by a host of nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, according to Vinson Mortuary, LLC.
“We honor his service. We remember his sacrifice. We welcome him home,” Vinson Mortuary, LLC wrote in closing its obituary for Gilbert — words that frame a solemn homecoming in Veterans Day week, with Veterans Day itself falling Tuesday, November 11.
What happens next is the service itself: visitation begins at 11 a.m. Saturday, November 14, at Mt. Carmel Community Baptist Church, 708 N. Fifth Street in Steubenville, followed by the funeral at noon at the same church and burial at Union Cemetery, 1720 Sunset Boulevard, according to Vinson Mortuary, LLC. No specific public date or time for the escort arrival had been announced in the sources checked as of November 8.
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