CHIMACUM — An honorary diploma will be presented to the family of former Chimacum High School student, Ralph Henry Keil, who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Keil will be honored at the school’s 1 p.m. graduation today in the high school’s auditorium, 91 W. Valley Road.
Keil’s first cousin once removed, Kathie Keil Crozier, who will travel from Shoreline to the Chimacum event, said she sees this honor as likely the final update to a long family story.
“I’ve been working on this for probably ten years, actively,” Crozier said.
Last year in September, she and family had a burial for Keil. Until 2019, Keil’s remains were unidentified.
Keil, who left Chimacum to join the navy in Seattle before graduating, was killed in the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, while aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma. He was 20 years old.
Of 429 sailors who lost their lives aboard the ship, 388 were unidentified, Keil among them. The unidentified sailors were buried in two cemeteries on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.
In 2015, the Department of Defence (DOD) announced that it would exhume the remains of the Oklahoma’s crew members to conduct DNA analysis. According to a 2022 article published in the Times Gazette, 355 of the 388 previously unidentified sailors were identified.
Among them was Keil.
“Ralph has been a part of my life my entire life, always,” said Crozier, who was born in 1944. “He was a part of the family, talked about, mentioned.”
Keil’s father Cornelius ‘Neal’ Keil and his mother Lutetia ‘Tish’ Keil never gave up the quest of keeping Keil’s memory alive and finding out what happened to him, according to Crozier.
The primary responsibility for that job belonged to Cornelius, Crozier said. After Cornelius died, the responsibility fell to Lutetia, after Lutetia died, the responsibility fell to Pauline Mae Keil, Crozier’s aunt.
“When she got very elderly, she passed it on to my younger brother, Walter Edwin Keil Jr.,” Crozier said. “He died very unexpectedly at the age of 54, 24 years ago, and it came to me. That’s how I came into this.”
Crozier has kept an account of Keil’s life and death, with photographs on Find a Grave.
“Today seems a fitting day to announce that Ralph Henry Keil’s remains have been identified and the family is working with The US Department of Defense Navy POW/MIA Branch of the Navy Personnel Command to determine burial place and time,” Crozier wrote in an update to Keil’s page on Dec. 7, 2019.
First in line for next of kin was a relative unknown to Crozier.
“A woman in Missouri, probably a distant distant relative, was in first position, but all she wanted out of it was the notification, because they do it as though the military person had just died,” Crozier said.”The process for someone who died today and someone who died in 1941, unless the family member declines any portion of it, is identical.
That person was notified in person along with her father, but didn’t want any further involvement in the burial or the ceremony, Crozier said.
“(She) was perfectly happy to have me take it over,” Crozier said. “For reasons my Petty Officer I was assigned to at that time, no one could understand, she would not sign any further forms, which she needed to do to assign it over to me.”
Finally, a contractor genealogist through the Navy established her official designation as next of kin, Crozier said.
After her status was confirmed, the process took on the normal flow, with Crozier able to move forward with scheduling Keil’s burial.
The full honors military funeral took place on Sept. 11, Crozier’s chosen date, in Tahoma.
“It placed closure to something that had been a major element in my family’s life,” Crozier said. “It was significant in the extreme, even though I’m the only one left of that generation. I regarded him as highly and had as close a relationship with him as you can have with someone you’ve never met and who’s always been deceased in your life. It was a very, very significant event for me. More than I had anticipated.”
In the larger sense, Crozier said she accomplished telling his story.
“I wanted people to relate to him,” she said. “I wanted people to understand that he was just an ordinary 20 year old kid who had joined the Navy to see the world, I think I got that across.”
“I’m happy to have had the opportunity to tell his story and to lay him to rest.”
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com
