Marble marker
honors lost sailors

By Burl Burlingame
Star-Bulletin

Instead of being ground into rubble according to federal regulations, the only marble headstone ever to leave Arlington National Cemetery was dedicated yesterday as a memorial at the Bowfin submarine museum at Pearl Harbor.

The headstone marked the common grave of 17 unidentified crew members from the early submarine F-4, lost off Honolulu in a training accident during World War I. An unprecedented salvage effort by the U.S. Navy -- dangerous enough to earn a diver the only peacetime Medal of Honor -- raised the submarine many months later. Only four of the crew could be identified, and the rest were interred in a single grave at Arlington in 1915.

The F-4 still exists at Pearl Harbor, buried in the silt under a pier.

A few years ago, Richard Mendelson of the Submarine Veterans of America petitioned the National Cemetery to have a proper mass-grave marker placed on the site, and that was accomplished last summer. The original headstone, however, which had marked the anonymous grave for 85 years, was scheduled to be demolished. Cemetery rules prohibit secondary uses for recycling headstone marble.

Mendelson appealed to Arlington to preserve the original headstone as a historic artifact, and the cemetery responded that could only happen if the stone was transferred to another site on federal property. At this point the Bowfin Museum, on Navy property at Pearl Harbor, volunteered to host the artifact. "What we're about is honoring yesterday's heroes," said Bowfin Director Gerald Hofwalt yesterday, introducing speaker Rear Adm. Albert Konetzni, commander of submarine forces in the Pacific Fleet.

Pearl Harbor "is a special place for submariners, a temple, the holy of holies," said Konetzni in his remarks, describing the harbor not just as one of the Navy's first submarine bases, but the site of a well-remembered World War II attack.

"The sea is glorious, but dangerous and unforgiving, to the terms in which we all serve," he concluded.

The headstone, which contained no names of the dead crewmen, will be placed on exhibit in the museum.

For the record, the names of the crew killed aboard the F-4 are George T. Ashcroft, Clark G. Buck, Ernest C. Cauvin, Harley Colwell, Walter F. Covington, George L. Deeth, Alfred L. Ede, Frederick Gilman, Aliston H. Grindle, Frank N. Herzog, Edwin S. Hill, Francis M. Hughson, Albert F. Jennie, Archie H. Lunger, Ivan L. Mahan, Horace L. Moore, William S. Nelson, Timothy A. Parker, Frank C. Pierard, Charles H. Wells and Henry A. Withers.