WWII hero home at last
KNOXVILLE — Former Knoxville resident Alexander “Sandy” Bonnyman Jr. reached great heights as a successful businessman before also distinguishing himself on the battlefield as a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor during World War II.
On Sunday afternoon, the Marine scaled the hilltop one last time, as his remains were laid to rest in a family plot at one of the highest points at Berry Highland Memorial Cemetery in West Knoxville.
Some 200300 people plus a Marine honor unit and band were on hand for the unique burial service, which was nearly 72 years after the first lieutenant died leading an assault on a Japanese bomb shelter on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa.
Marines and civilians, the young and old, and family members and strangers gathered to pay respects during the brief ceremony of mostly liturgical prayers on the sun-splashed day.
“It doesn’t matter what generation they serve, they are a brother and you’ve got to come out and support them,” said Josh Burnett, who served in the Marines from 2000-04. “They are family.”
Donna Buswell said after the service that she also felt a pull to come and salute him.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event, so I had to see it,” she said. “It was beautiful.”
Bonnyman, who grew up in Knoxville as the son of a coal company president and lived for a number of years in the family home where the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church is now, had been hurriedly buried at Tarawa in 1943.
Earlier this year, his remains were found by the nonprofit History Flight group of Florida, and plans were made to bring his body back to Knoxville for burial next to his parents.
The formal service included a procession led by a Civil Warstyle caisson wagon operated by Burroughs Battery of Blaine in Grainger County, a missing man formation flyover, a 21-gun salute, the playing of “Taps” and a Marine band musical salute.
Bonnyman’s grandson, Clay Bonnyman Evans, who has researched his grandfather’s life and was at Tarawa when his remains were found, said the soldier’s parents, Alexander and Frances Bonnyman, would have felt peace Sunday.
“It broke their hearts when he died, and as a small measure, they wanted to get him back to Knoxville,” he said during a reception for family and friends at Berry Highland Memorial Funeral Home off Kingston Pike after the burial.
Also on hand were two of Bonnyman’s daughters, Fran Evans and Alexandra Prejean.
Prejean, now living in Hawaii and only 2 when her father died, said she had been to Tarawa and called it a beautiful place. But she felt Knoxville is where he should be buried.
“He’s home in Knoxville,” she said at the reception.
Her older sister was 9 years old when her father died and remembers the family living in Santa Fe, N.M., while he operated a copper mine after leaving Knoxville. She recalled that they would go to church in Santa Fe and go to a local pharmacy afterward for lunch, and it was there that he heard the news about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“He was very distressed and agitated,” she said. “It was very, very memorable.”
Although he did not have to serve due to his work with the copper mine, Bonnyman soon enlisted and eventually met his unfortunate death in the Pacific. Fran Evans accepted her father’s Medal of Honor in 1947 from Secretary of Navy/Defense James Forrestal and said Sunday that she still has vivid memories of the long train ride from New Mexico to Washington, D.C., and the ceremony.
Bonnyman’s nephew, Robert McKeon, who led the liturgies along with Anne Bonnyman, a niece, recalled after the service that the noted Marine had a very likable manner.
“He was a very pleasant guy,” he said. “He was so good he could sell coal to a coal mine. He had a great personality and a leadership quality that all of us looked up to.”