Customer Simmons Hanly Conroy died of mesothelioma exactly 70 years after surviving the attack on Pearl Harbor
A hero died last week. Of course, he would not consider himself a hero. Most ever.
Frank Curre was one of the last surviving veterans of Pearl Harbor. He died on 7 December 2011, the 70 e Anniversary of the attack. Frank was 88 years old and died of mesothelioma, a rare cancer almost always fatal but caused by exposure to asbestos.
I had the privilege of meeting Frank there more than a year and serving as counsel for his family.
As Frank older, his memory began to fail him. He said he could not remember what he read in the newspaper this morning. But he always remembered what happened the day of Pearl Harbor.
Anyone who met Frank was touched by his memories. He had been telling them for years to family, friends, journalists and schoolchildren. His stories were aging. The auditors said his words, descriptions of what happened, you put out on the deck of his ship during the attack.
On the morning of 7 December 1941, he worked as a mess cook on the USS Tennessee. He heard two huge consecutive explosions. By the time he reached the bridge, a bomb destroyed the USS Arizona.
"This ship just 12-15 feet in the air, broke in two and settled down," Frank said this past November in an NPR interview. "If you had a popcorn bag and you came out here in the wind and tossed in the air -. Which was the body that have come out in the port"
These memories - those nightmares - would never leave him. Everything that happened that day was tattooed on his soul.
I remember getting a call from the daughter of Frank Linda last October. It will not do much more, she said. To our surprise, veteran day came and went, and we started to think, maybe, it was designed to hold on.
"It is as it held on for today, which is her special day," said Linda local newspaper family December 7
it was her special day, and he did his best to make sure it was everyone else special day too. When he was called a hero, he stressed men and women who died that day. They are the real heroes, he said. He spent 70 years telling their stories and keep their memories alive.
The technology will now take over to Frank. You can listen to his stories, told in his own words, to StoryCorps NPR.
Click here to hear Frank tell the story of Pearl Harbor.
