Closure

Former Hollywood agent and current documentary filmmaker Pat Dollard finds gives Iraq war widow Julie Shumney and her three children something no one else could.

Closure.

Just when Julie Shumney had accepted that advanced DNA testing couldn't provide answers to a mystery surrounding her husband's cremated remains, the Mesquite woman received hope for a different kind of closure.

Documentary filmmaker Pat Dollard contacted her last week and told her that he has footage of the last two weeks of Marine 1st Lt. Dustin Shumney's life. The final glimpses of the Marine were caught not long before he boarded a helicopter that went down in Iraq in January 2005.

"This is what I had been hoping for for the whole past year and a half, and the kids, too," Mrs. Shumney said in anticipation of watching the images with her children, Jordan, 13, Mallory, 10, and Conner, 5.

Though it probably won't answer the questions Mrs. Shumney has about her husband's remains, the widow said the documentary, scheduled for release within three months, could help the family say goodbye.

"It's really going to help a lot," she said.

"Conner can watch this when he gets older, and I think it will trigger a lot of memories for him. The last time he saw his Daddy, he was 2."

Pat Dollard is completing work on Young Americans, an Iraq War documentary filmed entirely by Dollard and the Marines he embedded himself with in Iraq.