Although he never served in the military, Scott resident Joe Oyler has been on a mission for five years to honor veterans who gave their lives in conflicts dating to the Civil War.

He has compiled a book about 99 soldiers from Bridgeville, South Fayette, and parts of Collier and Upper St. Clair, but he said his work continued to expand as he learns more about veterans, who were sometimes forgotten.

Mr. Oyler, a 71-year-old retired civil engineer, began his project in 2004 while attending his family's church, Bethany Presbyterian in Bridgeville.

"At services, we would sometimes ask the veterans to stand and be recognized. I decided I wanted to commemorate those from the church who perished while serving in the military," he said.

He began researching the lives of two World War II veterans from Bridgeville -- William Hagerty, killed in combat on Guam in 1944, and Samuel Allender, a flight engineer declared missing in action following a bombing mission over Germany in 1943.

His initial research also discovered the lives of three other Bridgeville veterans who were killed in military accidents in the mid-1950s -- Amos Jones Jr., Sam Patton and Richard Johnson.

"These men were the sons of either neighbors or friends of family, as well as being associated with our family's church," said Mr. Oyler, who grew up in Bridgeville.

He also lived in the same neighborhood as Amos Jones and he remembers playing softball and basketball with him, so Mr. Jones' story had a very personal meaning for him.

Mr. Jones played on Bridgeville High School's championship football teams in 1948 and 1949. In 1950, he was the starting quarterback.

After joining the Navy, he was stationed in Jacksonville, Fla., where he met his wife, Imogene. On Dec.17, 1953, Mr. Jones was flying in a Navy P-2V Neptune patrol aircraft with eight other airmen.

"They were on a reconnaissance mission, looking for Russian submarines, when a storm formed in the North Atlantic. They crashed in Iceland, on top of a glacier," Mr. Oyler said.

The storm lasted seven days, and by the time rescue teams could reach the crash site, it was covered with more than 8 feet of ice and only one airman's body could be recovered.

Then in 1981, as the glacier retreated, the crash site was exposed and the bodies were recovered. Mr. Jones is now buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

His brother, Gary Jones, who moved to Birmingham, Ala., heard about Mr. Oyler's efforts to remember veterans, including his brother, and called to thank him. He said Mr. Oyler's efforts rekindled a thought to visit the crash site in Iceland.

He contacted Benedikt Bragason, of Iceland, who replied, "I can get you there."

Last July 22, Mr. Jones visited the crash site with his wife, Nancy. After battling 30 mile-per-hour winds and rain, he reached the crash site with his Icelandic guides, where he was astonished to find the wreckage of the airplane had been preserved all these years by the ice in the glacier.

He said many people told him visiting the crash site would give him a sense of closure, but he found the opposite to be true.

"This trip to the wreckage provided an opening -- the reality that I had a brother and the memories of the years that we had together," he wrote in a small book he put together about his journey to Iceland.

After researching members of his church, Mr. Oyler soon found himself expanding his search to include all the veterans from Bridgeville, South Fayette and adjacent parts of Collier and Upper St. Clair who died in the service of their country.

He said he was inspired by the story of Bridgeville resident Alexander Asti, who died when his light cruiser, the Juneau, was sunk by a Japanese submarine at the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942.

"This was the same ship the Sullivan brothers served on," he said.

When the five Sullivan brothers died in the sinking of the Juneau, the U.S. War Department adopted the Sole Survivor Policy, a set of regulations designed to protect members of a family from the draft or combat duty if they have already lost family members in the military.

Mr. Oyler visited cemeteries and war memorials, poring over old newspaper clippings, searching the Internet and contacting the families and friends of veterans who told the stories of their lost loved ones in heartwarming and emotional interviews.

Benjamin Kerr, who lived in the Woodville area, was taken prisoner by the Confederate Army at the battle of Gettysburg. He was paroled, then recaptured at the Battle of North Anna on May 23, 1864, and sent to the Confederate Prisoner of War Camp at Andersonville, Ga., where he died five months later of starvation and exposure.

Rudolph Kovach from Bridgeville died in World War I of wounds after being hit with machine gun fire in France while serving in the U.S. Army.

In World War II, Wayne Carson died in 1943 when the B-17 bomber he piloted was shot down over Greece. Charles Danesky, from Cuddy, died on Iwo Jima. Charles Devaney, from Sturgeon, died on D-Day. Charles Deleuze, who also lived in Sturgeon, died in 1944 in St. Lo, France.

Edward Kolessar, who served in World War II and the Korean War, was killed while leading an assault on a hill near Schyon-ni, North Korea, in 1951.

James McAleer died in 1968 when the helicopter he was piloting was shot down in Vietnam. George Verdinek, a Marine who lived in the Cooks School area of Bridgeville, died when he was killed by sniper fire in 1965 in Vietnam.

Mr. Oyler's work is continuing. Recently, he said, he drove by the St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church Cemetery in South Fayette on Washington Pike and realized it was one cemetery he had not visited.

As he walked among the rows of graves and saw the American flags fluttering in the wind on the veterans' graves, he stopped at the grave sites of three Vietnam War causalities. The experience led him to delve deeper into researching the lives of local Vietnam-era casualties.