The mysterious death and choreographed homecoming of Proctor grad Lance Cpl. Sean Willey

Sean Willey, 21, died alone in a remote forest in western North Carolina last year.

His family will never know how the 2019 Thomas R. Proctor High School graduate died.

They’ll never know which day he died.

But, at least, thanks to the kindness of strangers, they’ll never wonder where he is again.

Willey disappeared last year while hiking the Appalachian Trail after his February discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps. The lance corporal had served at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and done a tour overseas in Norway.

He finally came home to Ilion, where he had moved after high school, on July 29 of this year, escorted by a motorcade of veterans and law enforcement officers who had made him one of their own, especially the staff of the sheriff’s office in Clay County, North Carolina that had investigated his death.

Willey’s estranged wife, Racheal, and his 3-year-old son Blaine received his ashes, while his grandmother Corinne Gregory, sisters Hannah, 21, and Cindy, 19, all of Utica, looked on.

Two Marines then gave Willey military honors, including a flag-folding ceremony, due to a veteran.

“No Marine should ever,” declared Commandant Stan Lewosko who volunteered the hall and organized a dinner for the occasion, “be left alone.”

And his family is grateful.

Hannah Willey is still grieving the older brother and best friend who died too young, she said. Sometimes she still sends him messages on social media “just to kind of get that feeling off your chest,” she said. “I know he’s not reading it, but it helps a little bit.”

But, Hannah also knows that her family has been blessed by the discovery of her brother’s final campsite.

“It was also a relief,” she reflected. “He could have been out there the rest of my life.”

The story of Willey’s death will always remain a mystery. But the tale of his homecoming — from the discovery of his body in rural, mountainous Clay County, a place once best known for its New Year’s Eve Possum Drop, to the arrival of his ashes back home in Ilion — is one of service to the ideals of loyalty and honor, and to a brother none of his rescuers knew.

It’s a classic case of Semper Fidelis, the credo of faithfulness by which Marines live and die.

Clay County

For Deputy Chief Todd Wingate and his co-workers at the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, the story began in September of last year. That’s when they received a call from a hiker who had stumbled upon a makeshift, seemingly deserted campsite on an abandoned logging road in a remote national forest.

The hunter reported a tarp making a temporary shelter, a pack and other personal possessions scattered around the site — and bones. Deputies from the sheriff’s office and from the law enforcement division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service headed out with two cadaver dogs.

They spent three days investigating the site, finding bones that forensic scientists determined to be human and identification cards with the name Sean Willey. A cadaver dog found a boot with Willey’s dog tags tied into the laces, something that particularly resonated with Wingate, a Marine veteran himself.

Nothing at the campsite suggested Willey had been there very long; he hadn’t had time to erect a proper shelter. Everything found there made sense: provisions, a light jacket, long pants, a T-shirt, a thermal shirt and a rifle, since he had planned to hunt.

At some point, possibly along the trail, Willey had scratched some words on the rifle’s magazine: “Memento mori. Memento vivere.” Remember you will die; remember to live.

Wildlife, insects, weather and time had all taken a toll on the campsite. Investigators found no clues to tell them why Willey had wandered a hard mile (as the crow flies) off the Appalachian Trail, making it about halfway to a residential area.

And there were no clues as to how he died.

“There was nothing suspicious about what we found,” Wingate said, “other than the fact that there were some big gaps in time that were unaccounted for.”

The death certificate listed his cause of death as unknown and used a best guess of April 7 as his date of death.

On his way home

Life had looked pretty good for Willey back on March 20 of last year when a friend dropped him at the Springer Mountain, Georgia trailhead. He’d spent a month preparing for the hike. He had plenty of supplies. He’d taken a mountaineering course in California while a Marine.

He was prepared.

In the service, he’d spent time in both North and South Carolina and did a tour in Norway, having new experiences outside the Mohawk Valley, something he’d never gotten to do as a kid.

And Willey was full of plans for after he got home. He wanted to get a job, a place of his own and partial custody of his son. He was thinking about going to Mohawk Valley Community College.

“He was posting pictures (on social media),” Hannah said. “He was enjoying his hike.”

On April 4, 2022, Hannah saw an Instagram post showing her brother hiking through the woods, the bare tree branches reflecting the early spring. That was the last contact she had with him.

Much later, investigators determined Willey had stopped at a hostel along the trail and made a financial transaction on April 6. His family later learned he sent a message to a friend through social media on April 7 from Hiawassee, Georgia, right across the state line from North Carolina.

But that’s when his trail ended.

No more social media posts. No more transactions. No confirmed sightings by fellow hikers when rangers, at the behest of his worried family, started asking around.

The nothingness lasted for months. “It was just day after day,” Hannah recalled. “It was just hoping and hoping.”

In September 2022, about when Willey should have arrived in the Mohawk Valley, Hannah got a call from her brother’s best friend who had received a call from the same hunter who later contacted the sheriff’s office. The hunter had done an image search on a photo he found at Willey’s campsite to find Willey’s and his friend’s names. The friend then put Hannah in touch with the hunter.

“He was telling me that his stuff was scattered all around what appeared to be a makeshift campsite,” she said. “And there was what appeared to be animal bones.”

But Hannah knew her brother had been missing too long. She knew he wouldn’t have left his stuff behind. She told him to call in law enforcement.

Results from a DNA test on the remains wouldn't confirm her brother's identity until May.

“It was a very long wait. The days, they just kept going and going,” Hannah said. “And then eventually, one day, I got a call. I had a feeling it was him, but then hearing the confirmation of it just made it all come back 10 times worse.” 

Who was Sean Willey?

Neither Willey’s decision to join the Marines nor his decision to hike the Appalachian Trail surprised his high school friends. He was the independent one with a soft spot for stray cats, a nerdy interest in history and a fascination with cybersecurity, a group of friends said while gathered around one of the tables at the Marine League at Willey’s ceremony.

He liked exploring the woods in area parks and seemed to always wear a smile in high school, poking fun at the people he liked.

“What I liked to call him was a giant teddy bear,” said Toan Phan, of Utica.

Willey, one of seven Proctor students to join the Marines, spent almost four years in the ROTC program at Proctor, doing lots of community service and color guard duty during that time, said Master Chief Mark Williamson, a naval science instructor with the program. He was always diligent and wore his uniform properly, he said.

“I think a lot of them joined the Marines just because of the discipline and everything else that we do, and structure,” Williamson said. “I think he probably liked the structure more than anything else. … He was just a nice young man.”

Hannah described her brother as a leader type, responsible for his age. “For me, any time I needed advice or I needed help with something or I would stress,” she said, “he was my go-to person.”

When he came home on leave from the military, the two of them and Racheal and Blaine would do all sorts of things together, walking around Utica, going to a New Hartford park, having cookouts and playing volleyball and cornhole with family.

“He was definitely, I don’t know if the word is personable, but he got along with a lot of people,” Hannah said. “And he had a lot of friends. Friends were easy for him to make. Family wasn’t always an easy thing for us so he found friends that were family.”

A new mission

As the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and Investigator Ethan Henderson investigated Willey’s death, Wingate became increasingly concerned about another more practical question: How was Willey going to get home to his family?

There were complications with trying to transport a body across state lines. The Veteran’s Administration couldn’t offer any help. Willey’s family asked for cremation, but Racheal still couldn’t make it down to North Carolina to pick up the ashes.

“Being a fellow Marine myself, I was not going to let him be mailed home,” Wingate said.

And that is when "Semper Fi" went into overdrive as Wingate and his allies in the sheriff’s office and at veterans' groups from several states spent four months planning how to get Willey home with dignity, with the respect and ceremony his service to the country deserves, and without cost to his family.

The veteran-owned Nine Line Apparel, based in Savannah, and the Fight the War Within Foundation teamed up to pay funeral and cremation expenses. Nine Line also produced a limited-edition T-shirt in Willey’s memory to support causes he cared about.

A Marine veteran in Georgia crafted a wooden vault with the Marine Corps seal for Willey’s ashes and a Marine regulation footlocker to store his dog tags and other personal effects for his son. Veterans in Clay County and other donations paid the expenses for the motorcade, including an overnight motel stay for those going the whole way.

Motorcyclists from the American Legion, the Marine Corps League, the Combat Veterans Association and Patriot Guard signed on to join the motorcade. Wingate’s 14-year-old daughter also decided to come, even though it meant leaving on her mother’s birthday.

“It’s kind of turned into this, I don’t know exactly what to call it,” Wingate said. “It’s just a humanitarian effort, I guess, in some way. I don’t even know if that’s appropriate to say. But he served our country and it was the right thing to do.”

And as he organized and fielded call after call after call, Wingate understood something he hadn’t before. Veterans groups are about a lot more than downing beers and swapping war stories on a Saturday night.

They are a means to continue the legacy of duty, service, honor and loyalty that begins in the military, he said. Wingate hopes that’s a lesson that his daughter and other young people learned from this massive effort to do right by one fallen veteran.

“What I’ve learned,” Wingate said, “is that veteran organizations are more than a collection point for people that served our country in loyalty. They are providing service to the upbringing of the future leaders of our country and the future public servants by this very thing.”

For people who never knew Willey, people who don’t know anything about Herkimer or Clay counties, this story might plant a seed that leads them to join the military or sign up for another type of public service, he said.

The final journey

A crowd of Willey’s well-wishers gathered outside the sheriff’s office in Clay County on July 27 for a service to honor him. Speakers read an obituary written by Hannah, a poem written by Willey’s grandmother and a letter Willey had written a year or so earlier, just in case he died.

Willey’s letter poured out his grief and guilt over the death by suicide of a friend in his platoon, and his desire to help others who are struggling in the future. He confessed what he believed were his failings and wrote of his determination to do better.

Above all else, he talked about his hopes and dreams for everything his son could become.

A 21-gun salute and "Taps" followed the readings.

The next morning, the motorcade left for Ilion: veteran/motorcyclists who came and went over the course of the 846-mile drive; state police escorts that shifted with state lines; a group of support vehicles; and a Clay County Sheriff’s SUV with Wingate, Henderson, Wingate’s daughter and the vault with Willey’s ashes.

Wingate estimated that at least between 150 and 200 people rode in the motorcade over the course of the two days with 70 or 80 riding at any given time.

The convoy made planned regular planned stops for fuel, but also to allow people to pay their respects. Many brought mementos — law enforcement patches, military and law enforcement coins, riding association cards, Marine Corps teddy bears — that got packed into the footlocker for Blaine.

And finally, on the evening of July 29, the motorcade reached Willey’s family, friends and supporters in Ilion where they honored his memory before sitting down to a community dinner.

“I’m very thankful for the work that they did,” Hannah said. “It was very nice to see that there are still kind people that will go that extra mile. When you say extra mile, they went a lot of extra miles.

“They’re a sheriff’s office; They didn’t have to do everything that they did, but they did.”

That faithfulness is what makes the corps special, Wingate insisted.

“He was a marine,” he said. “He was a veteran and he was ours.”

Resources for veterans

Are you a veteran struggling with your VA benefits, health or mental health issues, housing, unemployment or other challenges? There are people who can help you find help.

Crisis lines:  

• Lifeline for Vets. 1-888-777-4443

• Veterans Crisis Line. Dial 988, then press 1. Or text 838255.

• Stop Soldier Suicide. 1-844-317-1136

Other resources:  

• The Central New York Veterans Outreach Center, a division of the Utica Center for Development. Utica location: 726 Washington St., 315-765-0975. Watertown location: 210 Franklin St., 315-681-6294. Catskills location: 315-681-6294.

• New York State Department of Veterans’ Services. 1-800-838-7697.

• Find VA health centers and other facilities here.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Sean Willey's death along Appalachian Trail was not end of journey