The solemn tone of Scott Shriver's voice is noticeable, even though he insists he's not disappointed that his long-lost uncle may not be the mummified airman carved from a California glacier decades after he vanished on an Army training flight.

Forensic anthropologists with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base are trying to match the remains with one of four airmen lost in 1942. That could happen this month.

But Shriver said a lab official already told him that his uncle — Army Aviation Cadet Ernest G. Munn — is probably not the person discovered in October in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The lab couldn't say definitively if it was or was not his uncle. But in the end, no one there felt it was and they wanted Shriver to know that.

"To me, that was very, very kind," said Shriver, a 47-year-old high school biology teacher from Pittsburgh. "I shared that with the rest of the family so everyone is not sitting on pins and needles. Maybe next year they will go back and find another body."

Shriver, his mother and his two aunts had truly believed "brother Glenn" was found.

"I'm not down at all," Shriver said. "We were all hoping it really was him. But ultimately, it is not him. We will deal with it."

The 23-year-old Munn was one of four airmen on a flight from Mather Field in California on Nov. 18, 1942: the pilot, 2nd Lt. William A. Gamber, 23, of Fayette, Ohio, and two other aviation cadets, Leo M. Mustonen, 22, of Brainerd, Minn., and John M. Mortenson, 25, of Moscow, Idaho.

The mummified remains of an airman were discovered by climbers on the slopes of Mount Mendel in California. They found his head and arm jutting out of solid ice. He was still wearing an unopened parachute and a jacket with a corroded military name tag.

His remains were carefully chipped out of the glacier and flown to Hawai'i where the painstaking process of identification began.

The lab won't reveal if its forensic anthropologists have eliminated any of the four men, said Army Maj. Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokesman.

"Right now, all four men are candidates until we make a final ID," Nielson-Green said.

The lab was unable to get dental records for the four airmen and instead will use biological profiles and available mitochondrial DNA — a particular kind of DNA transferred through the maternal blood line of a person's family.

"There are relatives for all four men, but not everyone could produce a suitable donor," Nielson-Green said.

The lab also was able to use a special light source to read some of the letters on the corroded name tag.

The lab's final report — which will include who forensic anthropologists believe was recovered from the glacier — could be ready for an independent review as early as next week, Nielson-Green said. That review usually takes about a week to complete.

But in a search like this, one person's disappointment can become another person's spark of hope.

In Baxter, Minn., 82-year-old Marjorie Freeman believes the airman will be a neighbor she knew growing up in nearby Brainerd: Leo Mustonen.

Freeman's mother-in-law was the best friend of Mustonen's mother, Anna Mustonen.

"When this accident happened ... I can remember it so well," she said. "I was living with my mother-in-law. Mrs. Mustonen would come over every morning and have coffee. She would sit and cry. 'Oh, my Leo, my Leo, only if they can find him.'

"My mother-in-law would reach across the table and try to console her," she added. "This would go on day after day."

The youngest son of Finnish immigrants, Leo Mustonen was blonde, blue-eyed and serious, Freeman said. And he had a little gap between his upper front teeth — just the sort of detail that might make his remains easier to identify.

Everyone in Brainered knew he was lost somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas, Freeman said, so last fall's discovery struck a chord, at least with her.

The mumified airman can be only one person.

"I'm sure the one that is left is Leo," she said. "I am just sure of that."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.