When the phone rang earlier this year in Thedessa Weaver's home, she had no idea it was the past calling.

On the line was a woman from Virginia who said her father had been with Weaver's son when he died 50 years ago.

"You never know what's going to happen before you leave this world," said Weaver, 87. "You never know who's going to be thinking about you."

The person thinking about Weaver was Andrea Richardson Stowers, the daughter of Maj. Dale Richardson.

Richardson had been one of 11 servicemen aboard a B-50 plane that crashed in Alaska on Aug. 31, 1956, while on a weather reconnaissance flight. All the men died.

Stowers was 7 years old when her father died, and she has spent years trying to piece together his final hours. Some of those details have not been easy to uncover.

Richardson and the rest of the men aboard the plane, called the "Golden Heart," were based at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks. Bernie Barris, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force who has researched the Golden Heart accident, said the crew had two missions -- one public and one shrouded in Cold War secrecy.

The public mission was to collect meteorological data from remote areas where the United States did not have weather stations.

The clandestine mission -- kept secret even from their families --was to fly into international airspace and collect particle debris that could be used to detect Soviet nuclear tests.

Stowers, 57, was particularly interested in learning about the radio operator and lone African-American aboard the plane: 20-year-old Airman 2nd Class Melvin O. Lindsay.

"I was really curious about who he was," she said.

From his obituary, Stowers knew only that Lindsay was from Alexandria, Va., and that his mother had operated a beauty parlor.

After moving to Alexandria last year, Stowers began knocking on doors in the city's historically black downtown area. It was there that Thedessa Weaver had run Weaver's Beauty Nook for more than 30 years before moving to Wake County in 2000.

Weaver grew up in West Virginia and Lexington, N.C., but moved to Fuquay-Varina to be closer to her cousin.

Stowers eventually tracked Weaver to the Triangle through the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Alexandria, and Lindsay's story began to emerge.

A smart but restless youth, Lindsay dropped out of high school during his senior year. Weaver had not wanted her only child to join the service, believing that he should return to school.

But Lindsay, then 17, joined the Air Force in October 1953 by faking his age on the enlistment papers.

"I don't know how they let him do it," Weaver said.

Sent to Alaska

After training in Mississippi, Lindsay was sent to Alaska, where he spent more than two years serving in the 7th Weather Group and the 58th Air Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. He wrote to his mother frequently, telling her she should visit Alaska and see the midnight sun.

Lindsay looked forward to returning home at the end of 1956. Weaver had bought him a car, a red Mercury, that he frequently asked about in his letters.

After spending two years reviewing thousands of documents related to the crash, Barris said he has been unable to determine what caused the Golden Heart to nose dive that day.

"We just don't know," he said.

When news of the Golden Heart's crash reached Weaver in Alexandria, it sent her into a tailspin.

"I almost lost my mind," said Weaver, who recalls being so out of it she drove into Washington D.C., on the wrong side of the highway.

Slow healing

She eventually came to grips with her son's death.

"I don't sit up and brood over happenings," she said. "Worrying don't solve anything. So why worry?"

There was no worrying earlier this month when Weaver returned to Alexandria.

Stowers had arranged a memorial service for Lindsay and three other Golden Heart crew members at Arlington National Cemetery, where they are buried. A bus load of people from Bethlehem Baptist attended the ceremony, held a day after Ernesto walloped Virginia with rain.

Weaver now talks to Stowers several times a week on the phone. She has promised to make her famous sweet potatoes when Stowers visits her in Fuquay-Varina.

"I'm a mother now," she said, referring to her relationship with Stowers.