Eighty-four years after the Pearl Harbor attack, the remains of one of the last victims to be identified from the battleship USS West Virginia have come home to North Carolina.
Mess Attendant 3rd Class Neil Frye, who was 20 years old when he was killed, will be buried with military honors Thursday at the state veterans cemetery in Spring Lake.
In later wars, families would learn of a service member's death from a uniformed notification team to cushion the blow. But it was 1941, so word that Frye was missing and presumed dead simply came by telegram to his family, who lived on a farm in Hoke County, near Vass.
“The postmaster brought it out and read it to my mom and dad, and that’s how they found out,” said the last of Frye's nine siblings still living, Mary Ruth Frye McCrimmon, 87.
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