Wilveria Sanders holds a yellow rose during the 16th annual Missing Adults’ Day event at Jacksonville City Hall on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026. Sanders' brother, Shelton Sanders, was last seen June 19, 2001. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today
Published on February 20, 2026 at 3:50 pm
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John Rowan Sr. never gave up hope that he would see his son again after the younger Rowan disappeared in 2001.
Every year, at an event remembering missing adults, Rowan would sing for his son’s return.
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“If I die, let me die; Let him live; Bring him home; Bring him home.”
Sadly, Rowan never realized his wish to reunite with his son. Rowan died in April at age 86. His son, John Rowan Jr., is still missing, like many others in Northeast Florida.
A recording of the elder Rowan singing was played Friday at the 16th annual Florida Missing Adults Day, dedicated to raising awareness about missing adults and supporting the families who continue to search for answers and tips to help find their loved ones.
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Project: Cold Case, a Jacksonville agency dedicated to unsolved cases, along with the families of Rowan and Mark Degner (missing since 2005), hosted the event at Jacksonville City Hall, where the atrium was ringed with images of missing adults.
One photograph showed John Rowan Jr., whose car was found a month after his disappearance in a parking lot near Orlando International Airport, wiped clean of any possible evidence. He was declared legally dead in 2006.
Photographs of Degner and Paxon Middle School classmate Bryan Hayes were displayed nearby as Tanya Cone said she can’t believe they have been missing for 21 years. She is Degner’s aunt and wants tips that could lead to the pair’s being found after all this time.
“I think the community needs to be aware,” the Middleburg woman said. “I know I am still continuingly looking for a 12-year-old boy when they are now men. They are still missing — they have not been found. We have no answers, no leads. It is just a very difficult time, and this is just very important to us that we keep them alive in the public eye.”
Photographs showed Degner and Hayes, who were 12 and 13 respectively when they vanished after leaving Paxon Middle School on Feb. 10, 2005.
The photos were joined by digitally aged images of both boys from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, showing what they might look like now.
Images of 56 adults from Clay, Duval, Flagler, Nassau, Orange and St. Johns counties, some missing since the 1980s, were printed on a program given to everyone at Friday’s event.
A missing brother
Wilveria Sanders stood next to a photograph of her brother, Shelton Sanders, a Jacksonville resident last seen June 19, 2001, when he left a hotel in Columbia, South Carolina.
“It is important because all missing adults matter; missing children matter,” said Sanders, from Sumter, South Carolina. “We have to be the voice for our loved ones. They are missing. They are out there. Someone knows something. Someone will say something, and we want closure. We want justice, and we just want to bring our loved one home.”
Organizers said Missing Adults Day provides support to those navigating birthdays, holidays and milestones without knowing what happened to their loved ones.
It is also a way to remind people that “someone knows something” — a forgotten or buried memory that could lead police to finding the missing person, said Ryan Backmann, founder and executive director of Project: Cold Case.
Backmann started the nonprofit agency in 2015 to advocate for cold cases while linking families with information and law enforcement after his father, Cliff Backmann, was killed during a robbery in 2009 as he was doing renovation work in a Southside building.
The murder remains unsolved, as do many cases of missing persons, Backmann said.
“What unites the families here is not circumstance. It is absence,” Backmann said Friday. “It is the empty chair, the unanswered phone, the birthdays and holidays that come and go, the families who still keep the porch light on, who are scared to move. No family should carry that alone.”
Law enforcement officials also spoke at the event. St. Johns County Sheriff Robert Hardwick urged anyone with information to come forward and help families who continue hoping.
“Here’s one thing I think we don’t listen to enough,” Hardwick said. “There are so many people out there who have the answer to these cases, but they are not going to come forward for fear of something. I don’t know what it is. … Let’s help these families get answers in their darkest times.”
Any information about a missing person can be reported to police or as an anonymous tip to First Coast Crime Stoppers at (866) 845-8477.
