Private First Class Follese was a member of Company K, 3rd Battalion, 187th Airborne Infantry Regimental Combat Team. He was Killed in Action while fighting the enemy in North Korea on November 30, 1950. His remains were not recovered. Between 1990 and 1994, North Korea returned 208 boxes of commingled human remains to the United States, which were determined to contain the remains of at least 400 U.S. servicemen who fought during the war. North Korean documents included in the repatriation indicated that some of the remains were recovered from the vicinity where Follese was believed to have died. Laboratory analysis and circumstantial evidence were used in the identification of his remains in 2016. His name remains permanently inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial.