It was business as usual at the final meeting of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association Chapter 10.
Those in attendance recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Tom Berg reported on $43.71 left in the North Olympic Peninsula group’s treasury.
But their talk turned to nostalgia as the final members of a dwindling group, growing smaller each year, closed the doors on their chapter forever.
“This is a day that I’d hoped would hold off for several more years before it had to happen,” the chapter’s first president, 89-year-old Lee Embree of Port Angeles, said.
“It doesn’t seem possible that 1991 was the date of our first meeting.”
On Friday, 10 of the remaining members of the Juan de Fuca chapter, plus family members and some guests, gathered in the back room of Secret Garden Buffet, the site in Port Angeles of their original meeting 13 years ago.
Founding members
Thirty-five men who survived the infamous attack by the Japanese on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor met that day in 1991 as founding members.
“Everybody was telling sea stories at that time,” recalled Bob Rains of Sequim, who was an 18-year-old signalman aboard the USS Pennsylvania on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the Hawaiian harbor.
Two members — Herbert “Bud” Kennedy and Roy Carter — met for the first time at the initial meeting and discovered they had been on the same battleship in Pearl Harbor, the USS Oklahoma.
Carter’s job was to seal the hatch where Kennedy was, said Rains, telling the story.
The ship turned over and Kennedy was trapped inside the hull with other sailors for more than a day, until rescuers cut them out.
Kennedy died in late 1998. Carter still lives in Sequim but has not been an active member of the group for awhile.
Membership decline
Like Pearl Harbor Survivors Association groups across the country, Chapter 10 is seeing the decline of its membership as the men age and pass away, move away or are no longer able to be active in the group.
Out of the original members of Chapter 10, plus five who joined the group in later years, 14 members are left, said current president L.A. “Bud” Coggeshall, 84, of Agnew.
Sixteen are deceased, and others are no longer active members.
The decision to close Chapter 10 was a mutual one among the remaining members.
“Thirteen years ago, most of us were in pretty damn good shape,” said 80-year-old Syd Carr of Sequim.
“We used to march in a parade,” added Coggeshall.
“Now we can’t drive a car.”
