I've had this blog active for over 10 years now, and I have never really told the story of how this project originated. Something happened recently, a good thing, that made me feel this would be a good time to share. So, I'm posting an excerpt from the beginning of the book I'm writing, a bit to let everyone know what inspired me. I hope you enjoy the read.
Memorial Day weekend in 1966 (when the photo to the left was taken), I was a little brown-haired, freckle-faced girl of 8 years old playing among the stones marking the passage of my ancestors at the Machpelah Cemetery in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Machpelah is a large and picturesque old cemetery off of Locust Street with an ‘old’ section and a ‘new’ section joined by a walking bridge spanning the road on both sides. The cemetery sits atop a hill in the middle of town and is visible from Main Street as you drive toward the town center.
This was my first visit to the cemetery with my mother, a couple of aunts and my grandmother on a warm sunny day. I was playing as kids do; trying to entertain myself while the adults planted flowers and paid their respects. At my family plot among the flat, low-to-the-ground stones marking the passage of my ancestors is one large granite monument that stands out. The front side of the monument facing the road is engraved with the surname of my family members taking up space in the nearby plots, HEDRICK. I was playing on the backside of the monument, away from the road when I noticed a bronze plaque mounted on the back that reads:
“WILLIAM CLAY HEDRICK, ENSIGN U.S.N.R. ON USS STRONG,
LOST AT SEA WORLD WAR II,
FEB. 12, 1918 – JULY 5, 1943”
Bronze is not a magnetic metal by nature; it is an alloy of copper and tin, and has no true compelling properties, however I was completely drawn in. Most kids might give it a glance and move on, not asking questions about someone they would never know. Guess I wasn't most kids. I stopped my frolicking long enough to call my mother over to where I was standing, pointing and said, “Mommy, who was he?”
“That was your Papaw’s brother, honey.”
“But what happened to him? How did he die?”, I asked.
“His ship was sunk in World War 2.”
“Is he buried here?”
“No, he’s not, they never found him. As far as I know, there was only one survivor”, she told me.
This should have been enough to satisfy me, but I’ve always been a persistent little bugger. At times I’ve been nothing short of a pest. Mostly this personality trait has paid off in being able to find what I’m searching for. As I asked other family members about great-uncle Billy, I got essentially the same answer; the ship was sunk by the Japanese in the Solomon Islands, there were either no survivors or the one guy who survived and was stranded on an island for a month, but “no, honey, he’s dead and gone now”. So for years I believed there was no information to be found, no one to interview, call or write. I had no clue how to even begin to go further. But sometimes it pays to be a pest – or determined as hell.
Years went by. I grew up and had a family and children of my own to occupy my thoughts and time, yet questions remained. Who was this young man Billy? What plans did he have for his life? I had learned from family that Billy was a genius, having been honored before and after his death with academic acknowledgments for his grade point average while a student in high school, and while attending Transylvania Bible College (now Transylvania University) in Lexington. He was a bright and creative young man who spoke several languages fluently, many self-taught. Billy loved classical “long hair” music, playing the piano, and writing poetry, plays and short stories.
I can only wonder what someone of his extraordinary intellect and character would have become if not for that torpedo. The killing shot and the thirteen other known torpedoes fired (from 3 of 4 Japanese destroyers) from over 11 nautical miles away (the longest missile death strike in WW2) missed the other 6 ships in the task group and 14 other allied ships in the gulf that night. What freakish act of destiny allowed Strong to take the hit? This question and others were generated over time. There have been interviews with family, research in college library archives, finding people who knew him as a young man, and years of internet research. I decided to Google the ship in 1998, and the floodgates of information opened. In 1999 we attended our first reunion and met some of the men who survived the bombing of the ship. At this reunion I was given a stack of documents telling the story of the ship and the fate of its faithful and able crew. In 2007 I received photographs from one of the officers who survived; photos of happy events and better times on the ship, and they haunted me. Learning more had become a moral imperative, and the mission took on a new urgency.
Back when I first began researching Billy, I never even thought about the possibility of looking for his ship. Something like that was so far beyond my reach. I mean really – who am I? Who could I possibly know that might be able to help make that happen? And without the internet in the early years, doing this research was plodding and piecemeal; an interview with a relative here, a photograph or personal story there, not much going for me but perseverance. It wasn't until many years later and after discovering that there was an entire web site devoted to Strong and her survivors that even considering such a thing came to me.
After some correspondence with persons involved with the USS Strong DD-467 Association, and after a that reunion with these men and their families in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee in 1999, I began to visualize myself on the deck of a research ship. This vision has stayed with me and expanded over the years. In it, I can feel the wind on my face as I hang on to the rail and smell the pungent salt spray kicked up by the ship as it speeds into the Kula Gulf.
Contacts I made with researchers in 2007 became the vehicle for my dreams, as plans for an expedition to the Solomon Islands began to take shape. I imagined that my perseverance was about to pay off in ways I had only imagined. In reality, this contact did not pan out, but the future held something much better. A wonderful person I met a few years later would help make the dream come true. When those dreams come true, it's not without sacrifice. There have been speed bumps along the way, but I was willing to deal with anything to see it through.
All of us desire to experience life – the chance to grow up, go to college or learn a trade, marry if that suits you and have the two and a half kids, the dog and mortgage, and to look forward to gray hair and wrinkles that come from really living. In the living, all people write their own story on the clay tablet of life. In a war fought at sea, a sailor far from home just hopes to wake up the next morning, and not to the sound of artillery off the bow.
This is how 24 years after it began, such a story ended on a cloudy, drizzly moonless night in a far, far away place called the Solomon Islands. In the wee hours of the morning July 5th, 1943 a Japanese long-lance (type 93) torpedo put an end to Billy’s story and that of forty-five of his shipmates. It took less than an hour from start to finish for those men to go from being at the ready at duty stations on their mission that evening to a quick and violent death. Am I capable of appropriately telling this story and seeing that he and his men are not forgotten? It's up to me to follow his lead and do my best.
That same freckle-faced girl is now a grandmother of all boys (still got the freckles!). Due to developments in recent years, the story can now be told. Billy made this happen, I have no doubt. Was it his hand, his voice that guided me all these years? What kept the curiosity alive, and what made me care so much about a young man I would never meet in this lifetime? How much more can be learned by a visit to his watery grave in the blue depths of the Kula Gulf in the Solomon Islands? And out of all his relatives he could have reached out to, why did he choose ME?
-Tammi
Memorial Day weekend in 1966 (when the photo to the left was taken), I was a little brown-haired, freckle-faced girl of 8 years old playing among the stones marking the passage of my ancestors at the Machpelah Cemetery in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Machpelah is a large and picturesque old cemetery off of Locust Street with an ‘old’ section and a ‘new’ section joined by a walking bridge spanning the road on both sides. The cemetery sits atop a hill in the middle of town and is visible from Main Street as you drive toward the town center.
This was my first visit to the cemetery with my mother, a couple of aunts and my grandmother on a warm sunny day. I was playing as kids do; trying to entertain myself while the adults planted flowers and paid their respects. At my family plot among the flat, low-to-the-ground stones marking the passage of my ancestors is one large granite monument that stands out. The front side of the monument facing the road is engraved with the surname of my family members taking up space in the nearby plots, HEDRICK. I was playing on the backside of the monument, away from the road when I noticed a bronze plaque mounted on the back that reads:
“WILLIAM CLAY HEDRICK, ENSIGN U.S.N.R. ON USS STRONG,
LOST AT SEA WORLD WAR II,
FEB. 12, 1918 – JULY 5, 1943”
Bronze is not a magnetic metal by nature; it is an alloy of copper and tin, and has no true compelling properties, however I was completely drawn in. Most kids might give it a glance and move on, not asking questions about someone they would never know. Guess I wasn't most kids. I stopped my frolicking long enough to call my mother over to where I was standing, pointing and said, “Mommy, who was he?”
“That was your Papaw’s brother, honey.”
“But what happened to him? How did he die?”, I asked.
“His ship was sunk in World War 2.”
“Is he buried here?”
“No, he’s not, they never found him. As far as I know, there was only one survivor”, she told me.
This should have been enough to satisfy me, but I’ve always been a persistent little bugger. At times I’ve been nothing short of a pest. Mostly this personality trait has paid off in being able to find what I’m searching for. As I asked other family members about great-uncle Billy, I got essentially the same answer; the ship was sunk by the Japanese in the Solomon Islands, there were either no survivors or the one guy who survived and was stranded on an island for a month, but “no, honey, he’s dead and gone now”. So for years I believed there was no information to be found, no one to interview, call or write. I had no clue how to even begin to go further. But sometimes it pays to be a pest – or determined as hell.
Years went by. I grew up and had a family and children of my own to occupy my thoughts and time, yet questions remained. Who was this young man Billy? What plans did he have for his life? I had learned from family that Billy was a genius, having been honored before and after his death with academic acknowledgments for his grade point average while a student in high school, and while attending Transylvania Bible College (now Transylvania University) in Lexington. He was a bright and creative young man who spoke several languages fluently, many self-taught. Billy loved classical “long hair” music, playing the piano, and writing poetry, plays and short stories.
I can only wonder what someone of his extraordinary intellect and character would have become if not for that torpedo. The killing shot and the thirteen other known torpedoes fired (from 3 of 4 Japanese destroyers) from over 11 nautical miles away (the longest missile death strike in WW2) missed the other 6 ships in the task group and 14 other allied ships in the gulf that night. What freakish act of destiny allowed Strong to take the hit? This question and others were generated over time. There have been interviews with family, research in college library archives, finding people who knew him as a young man, and years of internet research. I decided to Google the ship in 1998, and the floodgates of information opened. In 1999 we attended our first reunion and met some of the men who survived the bombing of the ship. At this reunion I was given a stack of documents telling the story of the ship and the fate of its faithful and able crew. In 2007 I received photographs from one of the officers who survived; photos of happy events and better times on the ship, and they haunted me. Learning more had become a moral imperative, and the mission took on a new urgency.
Back when I first began researching Billy, I never even thought about the possibility of looking for his ship. Something like that was so far beyond my reach. I mean really – who am I? Who could I possibly know that might be able to help make that happen? And without the internet in the early years, doing this research was plodding and piecemeal; an interview with a relative here, a photograph or personal story there, not much going for me but perseverance. It wasn't until many years later and after discovering that there was an entire web site devoted to Strong and her survivors that even considering such a thing came to me.
After some correspondence with persons involved with the USS Strong DD-467 Association, and after a that reunion with these men and their families in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee in 1999, I began to visualize myself on the deck of a research ship. This vision has stayed with me and expanded over the years. In it, I can feel the wind on my face as I hang on to the rail and smell the pungent salt spray kicked up by the ship as it speeds into the Kula Gulf.
Contacts I made with researchers in 2007 became the vehicle for my dreams, as plans for an expedition to the Solomon Islands began to take shape. I imagined that my perseverance was about to pay off in ways I had only imagined. In reality, this contact did not pan out, but the future held something much better. A wonderful person I met a few years later would help make the dream come true. When those dreams come true, it's not without sacrifice. There have been speed bumps along the way, but I was willing to deal with anything to see it through.
All of us desire to experience life – the chance to grow up, go to college or learn a trade, marry if that suits you and have the two and a half kids, the dog and mortgage, and to look forward to gray hair and wrinkles that come from really living. In the living, all people write their own story on the clay tablet of life. In a war fought at sea, a sailor far from home just hopes to wake up the next morning, and not to the sound of artillery off the bow.
This is how 24 years after it began, such a story ended on a cloudy, drizzly moonless night in a far, far away place called the Solomon Islands. In the wee hours of the morning July 5th, 1943 a Japanese long-lance (type 93) torpedo put an end to Billy’s story and that of forty-five of his shipmates. It took less than an hour from start to finish for those men to go from being at the ready at duty stations on their mission that evening to a quick and violent death. Am I capable of appropriately telling this story and seeing that he and his men are not forgotten? It's up to me to follow his lead and do my best.
That same freckle-faced girl is now a grandmother of all boys (still got the freckles!). Due to developments in recent years, the story can now be told. Billy made this happen, I have no doubt. Was it his hand, his voice that guided me all these years? What kept the curiosity alive, and what made me care so much about a young man I would never meet in this lifetime? How much more can be learned by a visit to his watery grave in the blue depths of the Kula Gulf in the Solomon Islands? And out of all his relatives he could have reached out to, why did he choose ME?
-Tammi
RSS Feed