did sharks eat pearl harbor victims did sharks eat pearl harbor victims

A painting of the Arizona hangs on the wall of a sitting room. The Coghlan turned back, almost spent. Answer: Yes- in 1945, after the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese torpedo. Nobody was expecting anything like that.". "I got another ship for you," the officer said at last. There are over 470 species of sharks throughout the world. He had a ticket home to Minnesota, but decided to find a place to stay and come up with a plan. Most sharks are carnivores, meaning their diets consist of live prey, including fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. It identifies Stratton as a survivor of the attack that sank the ship. One day, a Navy officer came on board and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer for an assignment in the aviation section. Did he know anything about meteorology? He doesn't need to say which Saturday night by now. "Hi," he said, introducing himself. . High winds could slam one ship into the other and sink one or both of the vessels. He was soon aboard the USS Frazier, which left the shipyard at San Francisco in July 1942. Although he is 97, he decided he couldn't miss a final reunion this year and he bought his tickets early. The tender didn't want to be tied to the larger ship when the worst of the storm blew through. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. Inside the packets were the captains' new orders, military secrets, classified information that required clearance to handle. As he prepared for his new posting on the Frazier, Langdell decided to make a move. did sharks attack titanic survivors. Today, he tries to pass on what he knows to students of history. ", "Baloney," Conter replied. Abe offered condolences and said he prayed that all their souls were at peace. "Something had happened that no one could comprehend.". Stratton told her why: He had been aboard the USS Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. Bruner's neighbor, who has become a close friend and a source of transportation, picks the fruit to keep it from rotting on the ground. "We're right-arm rates." "They were very good days before the war. I still had to wait 29 years for that guy to come back and take his brush back.". That fateful day led the United States . "Why do you like the hat, dad?" What they didn't count on was the side-street parking. "I'm going to be back out there one of these days," Conter said, his voice wistful as he watches a foursome trying to stay on the greens. He squinted and thought about where he was. As they walked toward it, Langdell reeled at an odor. He was assigned briefly to the Arizona, then to the Saratoga, an aircraft carrier, then, as the Navy tinkered once more with its troop alignment, back to the Arizona. After about six months of training in San Diego, Hetrick returned to Honolulu and joined the USS Saratoga, the sister ship of the Lexington. I had to take them to the parties and sit there until it was over.". Civilian Casualties. In time, he felt no anger toward the Japanese, but he couldn't forget what they did. Sight-setters and pointers would locate targets visually and determine their distance and range. The fireball from the explosion engulfed the six men in the box and trapped them. The planes took off and landed on the water; the pilots tied up to buoys near the ship. "Cut!" Large species also consume marine mammals such as dolphins, seals, sea lions, and porpoises, as well as large fish species such as tuna, mackerel, and even smaller shark species. At his request, he was assigned to the officer candidate school in Newport, R.I. (See Pearl Harbor Attack.) They would serve together for a little over a year. Langdell was discharged at the war's end and returned to Massachusetts, where his wife, Libby, waited. Sometimes, Japanese pilots attended memorial ceremonies and some of the other survivors would shake their hands. He then spent 14 months recovering in Great . He settled in Palm Springs and built a career as a real estate developer, buying up land for commercial and residential projects. The USS Arizona ballcap that almost every survivor owns and wears. "No one knew where the hell I was," Bruner says. The ship carried four 5-inch anti-aircraft guns and six half-inch machine guns, and, initially, five 21-inch torpedo tubes. In Hawaiian custom, sharks were cared for by families who fed them and kept their bodies free of barnacles. He wrote a training manual whose precepts the Navy still follows. Finally, she located some of Bruner's tax records and found his address and telephone number. On Oct. 12, Langdell celebrated his 100th birthday with with his older son, John, who flew in from Spearfish, S.D. The man in the boat was from Muskogee, a town about 40 miles east of Morris. In March, the crew turned back Japanese forces in the Battle of Komandorski. "No," the worker said. It is about three feet tall, with a carved island figure on top and the silhouette of a Hawaiian warrior on a plaque. Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. These Photos Of The Pearl Harbor Attack Are Still Shocking Decades Later "A day that will live in infamy." By . A while later, he and Marietta were on the road again, to a missile base in Sturgess, S.D., to gas lines in Wisconsin and North Dakota. Hetrick recovered. We swept the decks and took the small bones. "Say your prayers, men, we're seven miles off shore and we're in 10, 15-foot swells," one of the officers said as the crew abandoned the plane. "There was a huge oil fire on the surface of the water fueled by the ships' tanks, so it created these giant fires all over the water," Nelson said. As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. Anderson grew up in the Red River Valley of northern Minnesota, the son of a prominent local judge. And he has watched with dismay the changes in survival training. UPDATE: Bruner died in 2019. He says that decision was the best thing he could have done. He likes chocolate and is disappointed if Ray Jr. forgets it. -Ryan Dutcher. "The lesson I've learned from that experience is that the 1,177 men entombed on the ship right now will never know the love of a wife or the joy of grandchildren," he said. He would become the final survivor to be interred in the ship. "It's one of the best actual memorials I've seen," he says. Three years ago, Ray Jr. received a call from a lieutenant colonel in the Rhode Island National Guard. After an initial run-in with the guard at the gate ("Three weeks ago, I was shooting at people and killing them and I didn't even know who they were," he growled at the guard. Conter attended the same event and was seated next to Valerie. The next night, an American PT boat retrieved all 10 men. Toward the end the war, Langdell was stationed in the Philippines, at a base in Manila. The Edsall sailed farther north, then headed to the Philippines, where they played baseball with a group of indigenous Moros, who had fought the United States more than 20 years earlier. Alcohol. Before the big battleship could leave Puget Sound, Anderson volunteered for another mission, joining the small Asiatic Fleet along the coast of China. He looks forward to his time with the guys from his years in the Navy. He keeps a photo from that tournament on a bookshelf in an alcove off the kitchen. He and his wife, Doris, have lived in the same house for 54 years. He spent the rest of the day retrieving bodies from the harbor. I'd been told things like that before. Anderson spoke to one of the tanker's crew about towing the Macdonough. "After 36 hours, I still hadn't put in a day. "In the Army you were crawling around in the mud and everything else and I didn't want to do that.". A woman from Illinois drew Bruner's name. After he returned from Korea, Haerry was promoted to master chief petty officer, signifying his experience and level of service. He doesn't like to talk about the attack. The man walked over and looked at Langdell's name tag. As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. After the war, he worked as a stuntman for Orson Welles and John Wayne and helped build Alan Ladd's house in the hills outside Hollywood. Haerry held the rope that connected the ships as another crewman swung an ax to cut it. Their skin charred and falling off, the men crawled down the line to the Vestal. Photographs hang on the walls of his room. He remembers the crewman trying to climb a ladder to escape through a hatchway on the deck. He stood strong and tall right in front of this general. The fellow he was talking with recognized Anderson's voice and they realized they had served together on the Yangtze Patrol before Pearl Harbor. Medals. dwayne johnson rock foundation contact. Anderson had finished his first day as a Hollywood stunt man. He saw Gene LaRocque, a man he'd served with aboard the Macdonough. They said, 'You should have been dead a long time ago.'". The easy stories he'd tell. "Knock it off. He visited the memorial and was relieved to see the builders got it right. The ship was still a day away from Honolulu when the captain received new orders. Las Vegas seems to like Hetrick. He started chatting up a regular customer, a contractor, and got a job building houses. "That's what I want to remember. Lou Conter is telling the story of the night his patrol bomber was shot down seven miles off the coast of New Guinea, dumping the seaplane's 10-man crew into the Pacific Ocean. "I said, 'Well, come on, then,'" Marietta says, and in 1950, they wed. That's where the cross-country adventures begin. "I do as much as I can to keep his story alive," his son says. Colombia. He stayed aboard the Solace about a month. He fought with other sailors in the Battle of Midway and watched the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. Tensions between Japan and the U.S. simmered throughout the early 20th century and came to a boil in the 1930s as Japan attempted to conquer China, even . Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) The whale shark is the largest shark species, and also the biggest fish species in the world. And he keeps it loaded. Framed medals. Cook stood on a shelf in the gun mount with his big binoculars and watched the Marines raise the flag to mark the U.S. victory. In early January, Conter visited his young lady friend again and again, Admiral Calhoun was there. "I really miss it.". He's not sure he'd have learned that lesson if he hadn't enlisted in the Navy. This all changed when the United States declared war on Japan, bringing the country into World War II. It was carrying parts of the Little Boy atomic bomb as a top secret mission and the Navy learned about its sinking four days after ot was torpedoed. The smile widens. He was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in February 1954, the rank he held until he retired. The war's over.". Potts says, shaking his head. And there's a trophy in the corner the paneled room that means as much as anything else there. So you see how that works."). Pearl Harbor centres on a cloverleaf-shaped, artificially . A pistol sits on top of his television at home. The Americans stopped the Japanese ships and wiped out some of the top officers. The crews learned the routines of the Japanese ships. OAHU, Hawaii (NEXSTAR) On the day that will live in infamy December 7, 1941 2,403 U.S. personnel were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Almost imperceptibly, he sways. Chile. Whale sharks are found in warm waters in the Pacific . "We'd patrol at night. He took up golf seriously in Palm Springs and played in the Bob Hope Classic six times, once on a team with crooner Johnny Mathis. "Sure, let's see it." The crews were based on tender ships moored in secluded harbors. It was constructed to comply with the 1922 Washington Naval . Only a few hundred people lived there then. In Alaska, he helped set up platforms that could keep up with tides that rose and fell as much as 32 feet. At nights, Anderson was taking classes in meteorology and electronics, trying to learn skills that could help him stand out among all the returning servicemen and women. It wasn't, but the flash was a reminder, as if he needed anything more. He kept the truck, held on to it through repairs, engine overhauls, new paint jobs. The ship steamed toward the Asiatic Pacific and soon Anderson was chasing Japanese forces again, only this time the United States was at war. By 1941, he worked the cranes on the ship, a job that entailed retrieving the Arizona's small seaplanes after they landed on the water. "We picked up a couple of girls and made the rounds. On one mission, Haerry's tender was tied to a larger ship as the crew delivered supplies and completed maintenance tasks. Haerry felt the entire ship life out of the water. After so many years of travel, the Cooks have settled into a more tranquil pace. They hopped in a Jeep and head up the hill toward one of the Quonset huts, the one where liquor for the officers' clubs was stored. 1914-1941:The mightiest ship at sea | Dec. 7, 1941: The attack that changed the world| Documentary: 'Witness to Infamy' | 2014: The final toast. Without them, Riel said, who knows where we'd be today. He moved to Provo and sold cars until 1990. "I've gotten letters from some of the officer candidates who had my father as an instructor," Ray Jr. says. We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.". "Not Navy ships, other ships. Calhoun quizzed Conter about his posting, his job on the ship. did sharks attack titanic survivors. Survivors' groups wanted to find all of them so their stories would not be lost. . "We wouldn't get much fire back and by the time they sounded general quarters, we were on our way," Conter said. Three years later, Ray Haerry Jr. holds the cross in his hand, fighting back tears. He weighed 92 pounds by the time he was sent to rehabilitation in Corona, Calif. As he waited, he had a feeling he knew what would happen, but he didn't say anything. He grew up in New Jersey and after high school, enrolled at MIT in Boston. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m. (local time) on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Rays. north but again I'm not a shark expert. I quit. ", "I was," Anderson said. By Michael E. Ruane. Eighty years later, many of those killed are finally returning home and being laid to rest. The flare exploded and started a fire, which forced the plane into the water. Not long after he returned to Pearl Harbor near the end of the war, Anderson searched out some of the battle reports from Dec. 7, 1941. "We would go in with a landing party or we furnished artillery for the landing force. Sailors jumped into fires to escape sinking vessels. Haerry accepted the medal, but found he could not speak. The Pearl Harbour . USS Indianapolis was a Portland class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy. He had turned 90 and was starting over again. Born in 1914, seven months after the first bolts were tightened on a new battleship in Brooklyn, Langdell grew up wooded agricultural area along the Souhegan River in southern New Hampshire. The man told him later he had broken both his hips in one of the explosions and had survived only because Hetrick was there to urge him on. He hasn't hunted in a while, though he still reloads his own ammunition on a garage workbench. He stayed on the 17thfloor of a hotel on Waikiki Beach. No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. "I don't think we'll ever be able to swim to shore. Doctors treated him and he recovered, but the his fingers never healed properly. An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. They listened for their names and their service branch. "Lou, let's go to flight school," Conter's buddy said one day. The clerks decided they could not send Stratton away without his permit. "He wanted the east coast, I wanted the west coast. On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed the Pearl Harbor Naval base in a surprise attack. The Japanese military had established strategic outposts in the Aleutian Islands and had its eye on Alaska. I think that's what kept me living to this day.". The band members had decided they wanted to honor survivors from that day. From the shore, he helped wounded men from the water, men whose bodies had been torn apart by bombs and bullets and fire. He endured what he did, he says, because that was his job. He climbed aboard the ship, ducking to avoid bullets from the gunner planes. Langdell arrived at Pearl Harbor along a different path than many of the young sailors, who signed up for the service because they were unable to find work as civilians. The job paid $700. Anything you choose is fine. "He was out to sea nine months out of the year, only home for three months," Ray Jr. says. I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". "He should have the Navy Cross," Stratton says. Haerry would come home on those days with cigar boxes full of the coins. He would answer questions, but in short bursts of description, with no emotion. "I just got discharged. The band would cover all expenses for him and Doris. You're the bravest man I ever know. Langdell lives now in a skilled nursing center. By 1991, the 50th . He stopped in the small town of Payson, Utah. He can't relive those images anymore. The story follows two lifelong friends and a beautiful nurse who are caught up in the horror of an infamous Sunday morning in 1941. Fire had blackened much of the structure still visible. Hetrick still likes to talk about the new shoes he bought the day before the attack in Honolulu. A few years ago, the Cooks attended a fund-raising dinner at a local American Legion post. "Are there any officers from the Arizona here?" "In the service, if you didn't use nasty words, you weren't a good sailor.". Usually, sharks will prioritize eating: Smaller fish. "It was rough weather, foggy, raining cold," Anderson said. Early in the morning on Dec. 7, 1941, Japan's Imperial Navy launched a surprise airstrike on the US military base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu . Sometimes we never landed, but we kept the line, always watching out for kamikazes.". Someone had stacked the boxes too high and in the humid environment of the island, the cardboard had grown damp and weak. Libby had arranged stays north of the city. Seabirds. Fires still burned on the broken USS Arizona the morning after the Japanese ambush. In late 1943, Conter flew a mission to rescue more than 200 coast watchers in New Guinea. He was still active, so would report to the Navy Pier each morning to check a list for the names of sailors who had been given duties for the day. They wouldn't send her over so I didn't re-enlist.". Lots of men brought home scars from World War II and Korea. In 1940, Anderson reported to the Arizona once more, joining his brother for the first time since they had enlisted. Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. He hired on with a farm labor contractor and within a year, he and a guy he worked with started their own business, contracting with the orchard owners to harvest crops. "They said, 'If you re-enlist, we'll send her over.' "He's there for me. He could see the band was sincere. Put in eight years at least and you'll have a pension, he promised. They found a way to take prints from the edges of his fingers, enough to satisfy the law. Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. Lonnie Cook was born in this rural town south of Tulsa, not long after it was founded as a stop on the Ozark and Cherokee Central Railway. Langdell knew Libby was friends with a skater in the Ice Follies, which was summering in San Francisco. "Would you like to listen to it?" He sits in his wheelchair as his son recites the narrative, keeping his father's story alive. BuzzFeed News Photo Editor. They could ride to the mainland then and leave for Florida. I guess he'd do anything he could for me. Yes, some of them were his friends. ", He stops in front of a newspaper, the front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin with the headline: "WAR! Nicaragua. But he doesn't tell his story anymore, not on his own. "I didn't have the slightest idea what would happen when I signed up," he said. When the regular stuntmen returned and the studio cut loose the subs, Ladd hired some of them to work on his house in the Holmby Hills above Los Angeles. No one seemed to be in charge on Ford Island, where Cook had spent the night. "Well, I'd brushed enough paint on that damn ship, I figured I could do it," he says. "The Arizona was a fighting battleship," Joe says. With eyes too close or two far apart, a crewman could deliver faulty readings. The family sold maple syrup distilled from the trees on their farm. At this one, he was looking around the room and he saw a picture of a sailor way back in the back, in a setting arranged like a memorial. But he became restless. "On the day I swore into the Air Force, I was still in my Navy uniform," he said. sinastria di coppia karmica calcolo; quincy homeless shelter; plastic bags for cleaning oven racks; claudia procula death; farm jobs in vermont with housing And he was aboard on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, a pivotal moment in history, but one that struck Anderson to his core. It sits today in the carport outside his home. At Kulangsu, an international settlement on an island off the southern Chinese coast, Anderson's unit ran into the French Foreign Legion, who had been cornered by Japanese soldiers on a high ridge. At the USS Arizona memorial, he became friends with a National Park Service historian and inspired a Pearl Harbor action figure that the service sold at the gift shop. They called the Marines out with rifles to protect the plane and the guys while we hauled it in.". Dec 12 2014. He went out to the floating memorial. For years, Stratton wore the scars from the Arizona without talking about them much. Inside, he found broken bottles scattered in a soggy soup of booze and cardboard. Yet in a place where you couldn't cross the street without running into a war vet, Bruner was not just another ex-sailor who made it home. "Mr. Langdell," he said, "when you're done with your breakfast, you'll report to the pier and you'll be met by a motor whale boat and a party of 20 enlisted men with sheets and pillow cases. Long a bachelor again, Bruner has also entertained lady friends from time to time. A year later, he felt better, so he re-enlisted. Did he ever. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. Once a week, they motor on into Tulsa, where Marietta takes a china painting class and Lonnie wanders the aisles of sporting-goods stores. In January, another ship took him to San Francisco to the Navy hospital on Treasure Island. The ship was moored in the shallows of Pearl Harbor's . Admiral Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy came to the conclusion that for the Japanese to be victorious in the pacific, they had to destroy the . He headed east and landed in Paducah, Ky. From there, he worked jobs in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and back to New York, where he welded 20-inch gas lines going through Brooklyn. He finished his training and was discharged in December 1945. The Macdonough stayed until September, then sailed back on patrol in the Pacific. He tried to keep his thoughts on the work in the office. And my co-pilot, Lou Conter, saved my life. A storm was approaching, a big one by the looks of it. One day, he stopped for coffee at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. "I knew everything that was going on.". The telegram, which misspelled Conter's last name, promises further information and asks his family not to divulge Conter's posting. Five years ago, Haerry moved into a nursing home, He stays in a room on the second floor. More than 20 years earlier, he had earned his real estate license in California and had maintained it. Ray Jr. seems surprised. He can tell stories about his years with the diving crews, but the truck has evolved into a reminder of another time. Their orders were lost on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. "If somebody in authority said do something back then, you didn't question it. USS Indianapolis at Mare Island. He won't talk much about the escape, or about the men who didn't make it across. We can't let it happen again.". So he did. Salmon. OAHU BOMBED BY JAPANESE PLANES", "That's one of the first extras that was put out that day," Potts says. It was Sunday and some of the crewmen with liberty wanted an early start. Bruner toured Nagasaki in a Jeep with other Navy officers and chief mates. He found a report by a gunner's mate. She was attending an art academy to learn dress designing. The Coghlan supported Army landings and Navy bombing runs. "I left them there and hoped to get them back," he says. Anderson's road to the radio booth started in Hollywood, with a screen test at a studio where he had worked. He jumped into the harbor, even though he had never passed his swimming test. ", "Fine," the worker said. what is florentine milan straw. Soon, he became one of the earliest TV weathermen and an evening fixture in Roswell homes, or at least those with televisions. Clayton Schenkelberg, who was born in 1917 in Iowa and joined the U.S. Navy in 1937, died in a senior care facility April 14 in San Diego. He refused to cut the line no matter what. He's never been back. He had turned down a promotion to ensign, preferring the camaraderie of the enlisted ranks. He joined the Navy because it seemed like a better environment. He will tell his story if he's asked and he will remember details along the way. The guns hit the periscope. The Macdonough had collided with another destroyer, the Sicard. He will meet three other survivors in Hawaii for their last reunion. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. They ran Joe and Libby Langdell's Village Mart for more than 20 years until they retired. "OK," Bruner said. Why Did Pearl Harbor Happen? "It gets your breath when you first see it," he says. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Anderson volunteered for duty on the Macdonough, a destroyer that downed at least one of the Japanese attack planes on Dec. 7. That led to a job in Roswell, the Sagebrush Serenade and Elvis Presley. Conter was talking about survival, about coming back alive. The venture was working out well. alain picard wife / ap calculus bc multiple choice / did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. He said he wanted Anderson to join the on-air staff. The two men not only met, they took a boat to the USS Arizona memorial and laid a wreath in front of the wall with the names of the crewmen who died on the ship. The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. But Hetrick couldn't find work, so inside of six months, he signed up for the Navy Reserve. Maybe next time. On a recent fall afternoon, Stratton ambles down the driveway and fires up the engine. But John Anderson, the Navy chief petty officer who called himself Cactus Jack on the air, had a good head start already. Cook enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and was assigned to the USS Arizona, one of the largest battleships in the fleet with a crew that, at full complement, numbered more than 1,500. Photographs. "We made so many landings," Anderson said. 3 gun turret. "It's always been my fear that people are going to forget that day, that people are going to forget the sacrifice that was made that day.". He asked what the fellow did. Pearl Harbor became one of the major reason for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy (in 1893) and the kingdoms annexation (in 1898) by the US government.The Spanish American war began that same year in the Philippines and Cuba which ended with the US winning both territories from the Spanish. The Navy occasionally cuts away small bits of the wreckage for memorials. That same year, he met his wife, Valerie, in Palm Springs. He decided to head back to the water. One of the men started yelling. DES MOINES, Iowa - A World War II veteran thought to be the oldest survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack died last month at 103. It's the same place where the oil is leaking" oil stores aboard the ship that, even today, still seep to the surface "that's where I got out from below.". He would work in the port director's office, delivering sealed packets to the captains of Navy ships. The woman helped connect Bruner with other survivors from the Arizona and Pearl Harbor. "But it was a lot better than being shot at.". Hetrick was still just 21 by then, but a seasoned sailor who shared little in common with the 17-year-old kid who left high school and joined the Navy on his parents' signature. The Hirasaki family suffered some of the worst losses that terrible morning. Now, Bruner prepares for his next trip in the Captain's Quarters. He felt a tap on his shoulder. They respected a guy who survived such a horrific attack. He finally found people who understood his experience. The nurse who checks in on him regularly likes Haerry. "He was very military by then, very disciplined.". Stratton's eyes brighten. "That lumber was so damn green then, we used to kid we had to shoot the squirrels out of it.". "They played country music because the people here loved that," Anderson says. They covered the growing seasons: cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, grapes. "I hadn't told him he was going to be individually honored that day," he says.