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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