Bagpipes played Amazing Grace during the graveside service. As the Caledonia Lodge Bagpipe ...

Bagpipes played Amazing Grace during the graveside service. As the Caledonia Lodge Bagpipe Players of Salina, Kansas, traveled to honor the Baxter Springs sailor. While playing they walked away in the distance to the north. Their playing was drown out by the military flyover. It was a perfectly timed out and meaningful moment. Caledonia Lodge is a Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge with a Celtic flare. Caledonia #459, part of District 03C, is the only Lodge in Kansas with a Lodge Piper. BAXTER SPRINGS, Kan. — A World War II sailor who was killed during the Pearl Harbor attack will be finally be laid to rest in his hometown due to DNA matching.

Hadley Heavin served as F1C (Fireman First Class) on the USS West Virginia, but was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. It was that attack that ushered the United States into World War II.

The West Virginia sank in shallow water that day and Heavin was one of 66 sailors who became entombed in the ship underwater. It was refloated about 18 months later, then rebuilt to rejoin the Pacific Fleet. Heavin’s remains were interred at Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu, HI, as one of the 66 sailors who were unknown. His name was added to the list of the missing in action.

Fast forward to 2017, Heavin’s brother Charlie sent DNA to the Navy in a program where they were working to find families of those missing in action. Charlie was a match to remains of an unknown sailor who was buried in Punchbowl Cemetery in Hawaii.

Fireman 1st Class Hadley Irwin Heavin boarded the USS West Virginia as a member of the battleship’s crew on 31 December 1938. He was on board the West Virginia when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. After the attack F1c Heavin’s body could not be identified and he was listed as “Missing in Action” (MIA). While at the Department of Defense (DoD) in January 2012, retired Wichita Police Chief Rick Stone prepared reports on all of the West Virginia’s MIA’s which listed F1c Heavin as a Most Likely Match to multiple West Virginia “Unknowns” buried the Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu. Later, researchers from the Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation, using advanced law enforcement investigative techniques and sophisticated technologies not available at the Department of Defense (DoD), continued to investigate F1c Heavin’s case which narrowed the list of Most Likely Matches. On 13 June 2017, after over five years, the Department of Defense finally decided to act on Chief Stone’s recommendations and began disinterring all of the USS West Virginia Unknowns. F1c Heavin was recovered from the grave site in the Punchbowl Cemetery indicated by Chief Stone’s research in 2012 and his identification was officially announced by the DoD on 20 November 2019.

Welcome home Sailor! We share the joy of your family in your return! God Bless you and thanks to ALL who never forgot you and your service to our country!