Confirmation!

Robert Costigan was a Navy officer stationed in Key West during the Cuban missile crisis.

He flew missions over Vietnam.

He was aboard the U.S.S. Hornet — navigating with a sextant under an overcast sky — when it retrieved the Apollo 11 astronauts after splashdown.

It was a small piece of paper, however, a perfunctory detail, that gave him more trouble than a 25-year military career.

That changed last month.

The 91-year-old Spirit Lake resident finally got the letter he had been awaiting for almost three decades, a document from the Veterans Administration confirming his military service.

It just showed up in his mailbox in front of his house that is tucked off a dirt road east of town.

“With no explanation why it took so long,” Costigan said.

The letter, and the certificate of eligibility that is required when veterans apply for a VA loan, came with a handwritten note.

“After a clear ordeal,” VA loan specialist Mark Franklin wrote. “We do have your certificate of eligibility attached … you, sir, have all of your entitlement with no prior use.”

He gleams now. But the ordeal didn’t always give him pleasure.

Costigan, who joined the Navy the day after FDR died and served until the early 1970s, had for a quarter century stewed over the notion that after a distinguished naval career he was unable to confirm his service because of what he considered a bureaucratic blunder.

Costigan had sent his original service records to Boise along with the application for the certificate of eligibility when he moved to Idaho to buy a home.

He called the VA many times, visited with representatives and knew them by name, but the certificate of eligibility showing his right to benefits that come with the service, seemed immersed in a mire of red tape.

“It made me really angry,” he said.

But he didn’t give up, not even when part of the VA branch that was the keeper of the records moved out of state from Boise.

“They said the records were lost,” he said.

He continued to call and send letters to representatives and the governor’s office.

His daughter, Cheryl, a Panhandle social worker, who grew up all over the world as her father relocated to flight stations from California to Italy, has watched her dad’s doggedness.

“He’s nothing if not persistent,” Cheryl said.

She wasn’t surprised he finally got his way.

Costigan attributed his small victory to Idaho Gov. Brad Little.

When he met the then-lieutenant governor at a political gathering in Coeur d’Alene a while back, Costigan said that Little was interested in the letter dilemma.

“He was one of those guys you like right away,” Costigan said. “He listened to me.”

The letter’s arrival coincided with this year’s gubernatorial inauguration. Costigan received his long-awaited certificate of eligibility a few months after Little became governor and attributes the VA’s response — after 26 years — to the latest governor’s leadership.

Emily Callahan, Gov. Little’s communications director, said her office couldn’t confirm that her boss pushed through Costigan’s 26-year request for the certificate.

“He does write down the names and the information and has staff follow up,” Callahan said.

Nevertheless, the news of Costigan’s small victory was well received in Boise, she said.

The governor “is very pleased to hear this longstanding issue was finally resolved for Mr. Costigan,” Callahan wrote in an email. “We thank Mr. Costigan for his service to our country.”

Costigan insists the governor had a hand in his good fortune.

Too much coincidence for it to be otherwise, he concluded.

“I couldn’t even pry that loose from the VA,” he said.

Although he did not have the certificate when he bought his Spirit Lake property in the 1990s, he has recently mulled moving closer to town.

“I may use it yet,” he said.