Mus2c Francis E. "Ham" Dick

https://www.stripes.com/news/navy-musician-killed-at-pearl-harbor-b...

VANCOUVER (Tribune News Service) — A line of leather-clad motorcyclists stood at attention in front of the Vancouver Funeral Chapel Wednesday morning bearing American flags and saluting. The Patriot Guard Riders were a welcoming committee, of sorts, for Navy musician second class Francis E. Dick.

It’s the first time Dick, who was from Woodland, had been back in Washington since joining the crew of the USS Oklahoma in 1940.

“His mother hung on until the age of 99 waiting and hoping for something like this, so it’s really something to have him home,” said Dorothy Fulbright of Longview, Dick’s first cousin.

Fulbright was 6 when Dick and 428 other sailors and Marines died aboard the USS Oklahoma during Japan’s 1941 attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor.

In the years immediately after the attack, only 41 crew members were identified and buried in marked graves. The remaining crew, including Dick and three other Cowlitz County men, were buried as unknowns at a national cemetery in Honolulu.

They remained there until 2015, when the Department of Defense approved a project to dig up their caskets and identify them using modern forensic and DNA technology.

“Each day someone is notified (their relative was identified), and it gets them one step closer to coming home,” said Lt. Cmdr. Erica Reid-Dixon, who escorted Dick’s remains from the Nebraska lab where they were identified to his final resting place in the Vancouver Barracks Post Cemetery.

“We can all do our part to bear witness to his sacrifice,” Reid-Dixon said of Dick. “The more we remember, the more we can live our lives to honor that sacrifice.”

Wednesday’s funeral service completes Dick’s homecoming. It’s a moment many of his family members waited their whole lives for, said Carole Green, Dick’s sister and only surviving immediate relative.

He was a skilled violinist, but “in five minutes, he could play (any instrument) he picked up,” Green said.

Also in the crowd with Dick’s surviving relatives was another descendant of two USS Oklahoma crew members: Dick Artley of Idaho. Artley’s father, nicknamed Swede, was one of the 32 crew members who survived after being cut out of the hull of the ship; his uncle, Daryle, who was also from Woodland, was buried in the unmarked graves along with Francis Dick.

“Ham and my dad were really good friends on the ship,” Artley said at the service. He and his wife, Jennifer, traveled from Idaho to pay their respects to Dick.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56128769/francis-edward-dick

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/77291065/francis-edward-dick

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/196623622/francis-edward-dick