The U.S. Department of Defense announced yesterday that the remains of the Highland Heights native and two other American soldiers are being returned to their families for burial. The three were among a crew of seven who went down in poor weather on Feb. 6, 1969, in the Huong Hoa district.

       Stanley, 23, was running an emergency supply mission during the Vietnam War. The quiet, car-loving graduate of Mayfield High School will be buried with full military honors Sept. 6 in Arlington National Cemetery, his brother, Ronald Stanley, 46, said last night.

       "It still hurts tremendously," Ronald said of his brother's death. "There's a source of pride that he served and anguish that we haven't been able to give him the honors that his sacrifice warranted."

       The Stanley family has known since November 2000 that Charles' remains had been identified, thanks to a multimillion-dollar effort by the U.S. military to reduce the numbers of soldiers listed as missing in action.

       But the military held Stanley's remains as it tried to identify all six American soldiers aboard the UH-1H Huey helicopter. A South Vietnamese soldier was also aboard.

       Ultimately, the military has been able to definitively identify only three of the six, spokesman Larry Greer said yesterday.

       Stanley said he understood that some relatives of soldiers whose remains have not been identified are not yet ready to accept the military's conclusion that everyone in the helicopter died on impact.

       The Army would like a consensus on its findings among the families before it buries "group" remains, or those that could not be identified by DNA testing.

       Charles' funeral will be the closure the Stanley clan needs, Ronald said. Waiting to bury his remains - four teeth and a femur bone - has been a "great source of frustration," Ronald said.

       "I understand the Department of Defense would like to do all of these things in a group manner," he said, "but this has been a challenge."

       Ronald was 14 when the family received news of the wartime tragedy.

       They were buoyed briefly when the military released captured film of a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. Family members thought they saw Charles.

       But hope dimmed with time. About 20 years ago, the family placed a memorial marker in Acacia Cemetery in Mayfield Heights.

       Then, in the mid-1990s, a series of joint expeditions by American and Vietnamese military uncovered the crash site.

       The teams collected aircraft debris, personal artifacts and human remains.

       The military matched DNA from the femur bone to a blood sample given by Charles' sister, Carol Subel, 59, of Chagrin Falls.

       Subel said nearly 30 family members are planning to attend the Arlington funeral. She wishes her mother could be among them. Martha Stanley died two years ago at age 80.