Memorial for HMS Valiant submariner Kevin Whale
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By Ruth Banks
Several decades after a tragic
car crash killed a much-loved sailor, a group of his colleagues
will finally pay their respects at his graveside
tomorrow.
Able Seaman Kevin Whale was a
hugely-popular member of the crew that worked on the re-fit of HM
Submarine Valiant at Chatham Dockyard in 1989.
But when he was killed in a road
accident a year later, when the submarine had sailed on to Faslane
in Scotland, operational commitments prevented his crewmates from
attending his funeral.
They never even found out where
he was buried until a chance event 29 years later led one of them
to stumble across his grave in Gillingham.
Now the former crew-mates are
coming together from all over the world to attend a memorial
service for Kevin at Woodlands cemetery on Saturday.
Organiser Paul Williamson, 47,
said it had been an emotional discovery.
"We didn't know where Kevin was
buried and he wasn’t from Kent," he said.
"But last year, one of the guys
decided to go up to Chatham to visit a friend’s grave in
Gillingham.
"He was standing looking at it,
when his wife noticed that two graves along was a grave which had
HMS Valiant inscribed on it.
"He was shocked to tears because
we didn't know where Kevin was buried at all, and to find his grave
in such circumstances was kind of an omen."
Amazingly, Paul has tracked down
the minister who originally conducted the service, and has even
traced Kevin’s daughter Cherie, who was only three months old when
her father died.
He said: "I had the number for
about five days but I didn't know what to say. Eventually she
answered the phone and I said the words ‘You don't know me but I
knew your father’ and she burst into tears.
"She said it was the best thing
that ever happened because she'd never known her father.
"She's coming along to the
memorial service and it's the first time she'll ever have been at
her father's grave.
"I think that it's closure for
us. It'll be quite an emotional day."
Friday, July 30 2010
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