Memorial service 'is the time to acknowledge our dear Sharon'
By Dale Huffman
A studious, pretty and promising 13-year-old girl left her home on Cornell Drive in Dayton View one afternoon 33 years ago wearing a yellow long-sleeved sweater, blue jeans and gym shoes.
Sharon Lynn Pretorius, a tall girl with long, brown hair in braids, had come home from Fairview High School, where she was a freshman, took a piano lesson, then said goodbye to her brother Richard and began to move about the neighborhood collecting money for her Journal Herald route.
She never returned.
The mysterious disappearance triggered more than three decades of frustration for family members, friends and Dayton police investigators.
Now, members of the Pretorius family, who have lived with the unknown all these years, have made a "joint decision of the heart" to have a memorial service as they pray for closure.
In a paid notice on the obituary page of the newspaper today, the family indicates that Sharon is "presumed abducted and murdered" after she disappeared on Sept. 28, 1973.
"My children and I worked hard on the wording of the announcement," said Marycarol Pretorius, the mother of Sharon and five siblings. "We feel she is gone forever and we think this will help us heal spiritually."
The memorial service is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Saturday at North Riverdale Lutheran Church, 45 Kurtz Ave. The mother said the event is open to friends who knew Sharon, those who were neighbors of the family, the hundreds of volunteers who spent days searching the city, and to those who "remember our Sharon with love and want to join us as we say goodbye."
The idea to have a service was made by the family two years ago, the mother said, when they all got together when one of the siblings became ill.
"The children are all married and live far away from each other, and they never had the opportunity to talk much about Sharon. We, of course, miss and love her much, but never had an opportunity to honor her as a member of the family. So this became a family decision — a thing of the heart — and we all agreed this is the time to acknowledge our dear Sharon and to let this be a healing process."
When Sharon went missing in 1973, there was no such thing as an Amber Alert, and back then, when a person was missing, even a child, the family had to wait 24 hours before a search was initiated.
Jim Paxton, then a police officer in Dayton's Fifth District, became the chief investigator in the Pretorius case, and he thinks to this day the case might have been solved if police had been allowed to move earlier.
"We determined it was highly unlikely that Sharon ran away," said Paxton, the father of five grown children. "We had a witness who later told us she saw a girl who fit the description of Sharon struggling with a man near a car at the corner of Cornell and Philadelphia Drive on the day she disappeared. But it was a cold trail by then."
He added, "I worked many long hours and I traveled so many dead ends. We had calls from several states, and we checked out all kinds of leads, including one that she may have been seduced by a religious cult. But we never found Sharon."
Paxton, who retired in 2000 after 27 years on the force, stopped by the Pretorius home over the years just to let the mother know he was still frustrated about the case.
"I can imagine what it has been like for Marycarol and her five kids. Just the other day I was driving near where they used to live and I wondered in my mind how old Sharon Lynn would be today."
The answer is she would be 46 this year.
Older brother Doug turned 50 this year, and Richard is the next in line, at 48. Sharon was the oldest daughter, and is followed by siblings Brian, now 44; Marybeth, 42; and David, 40.
Thirty-three years ago, soon after the disappearance, I visited the Pretorius family, was welcomed into the home and sat at a kitchen table with the mother and her five children. There was an empty place setting at the table. It was for Sharon.
In years that have passed, I have talked to the mother, a retired librarian for Dayton public schools, and her children from time to time, as anniversaries of the day Sharon disappeared came and went.
Doug, a minister, said his missing sister impacted his life and in part led him to his vocation. "I really encourage people to come to funerals, because it gives a kind of closure," Doug said. "I noticed there was a lack of that with Sharon."
Marybeth, who lives in Reston, Va., is home helping with the preparations for the services. "Missing my sister made me really feel how precious life is, and that you won't always have the people around you that you love," she said.
"It would be fair to say there still remains a sadness for me," David said. "It doesn't go away in time. I still have this sadness for a loss that cannot be replaced."
About a week after her daughter disappeared, Marycarol remembers walking into her daughter's empty bedroom.
"I kneeled down and I pounded my hands on the bed, and I said, 'Lord, I will love you if my daughter is ... dead. And I will love you if she is returned to me.' Then I had to pause, but I finally added, 'And I will love you, Lord, if it happens that I never know.'"
This is the 33rd year of not knowing.
But now, after all the tears, and agonizing fears, dashed hopes and heartfelt prayers, the family is joining with others to celebrate the life of Sharon Lynn Pretorius, and to wish her God's grace.
"A family thing of the heart," the mother said. "Closure."
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