By Joseph Hauger, WV News
THOMAS, W.Va. — After nearly 80 years, Stanislaw Drwall has come home to Thomas.
On what would have been his 105th birthday, Drwall’s body was laid to rest adjacent to his parents’ graves in his native Tucker County in a ceremony attended by his family, honor guards, all ranks of U.S. Navy personnel, and a community that still remembers.
A victim of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Drwall never left Hawaii — his body remained submerged in the sunken wreckage of the USS Oklahoma for years. Along with hundreds of other unidentified remains, Drwall’s body was recovered and interred in the “Punchbowl,” the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
After his remains were finally identified earlier this year, Drwall was brought home Wednesday night for burial in the Mount Calvary Cemetery in Thomas on Thursday.
Even as all those decades had passed, the family never gave up on the idea of someday bringing him back from Hawaii, nephew Tom Proud said…
