Sailors carry a casket with the remains of John Connolly at Arlington National Cemetery in March 2025. (Tracey Attlee/Special to the Georgia Recorder)
More than 80 years after he died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, John Connolly was finally laid to rest – not as an unknown in a mass grave, but as a naval officer in Arlington National Cemetery.
When the Navy first called to tell his daughter, Virginia Harbison, that her father’s remains had been identified, she hung up. At 91, living in assisted care in Texas, she could hardly believe it. It was her son, Bill Ingram, who called her back to share the news again. She was silent for so long that he had to ask if she was all right. “Bill,” she said, “I hadn’t thought about that for 60 years.”…