Pearl Harbor art shows men who fought for the USS Oklahoma Memorial

BY John Greiner Comments 1
Published: October 9, 2008

Two Pearl Harbor survivors at the state Capitol on Wednesday unveiled a painting of the USS Oklahoma Memorial.

"I’m sorry. I can’t look at it without tears,” USS Oklahoma survivor Ed Vezey, 88, of Center, Colo., said. "This will hang here in the Capitol for a long time ... to remind everybody, hey, that freedom we love so much is not free. People pay a price.”

The USS Oklahoma Memorial in Hawaii commemorates the ship and the 429 sailors and Marines who died when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

"It’s quite a touching event to see these kids finally memorialized,” Paul Goodyear, 90, said of his shipmates who died in the attack.

Vezey and Goodyear were leaders of the drive to raise money to build the memorial at Pearl Harbor. It was dedicated Dec. 7.

They are the two sailors featured in the painting.

"I think if you’ll listen in your hearts, you’ll hear 429 thank yous,” said Goodyear, of Casa Grande, Ariz.

Members of Claremore High School’s Junior Naval ROTC unit were at the ceremony. The unit was at the memorial’s dedication last year and is in the painting.

Looking back

Lisa Ridge, an Indiana school teacher, lost her grandfather, Paul Nash, in the attack. She learned before the ceremony that her grandfather’s name is on one of the memorial’s columns in the painting.

"It will be lasting,” she said of the painting. Woody Eugene Wicker of Broken Arrow attended. His uncle, radio operator Eugene Woodrow Wicker of Coweta, gave the first warning to "man your battle stations.”

Ridge said the painting’s image of the sailor in the clouds was touching.

It moved Vezey, too. "That says the guys out there are saying, ‘Hey, thanks. This is marking that we’re here.’”