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 Photo Gallery of the Ceremony for the USS Grunion
(Cleveland) - A memorial service was held in downtown Cleveland for more than 200 relatives of the lost crew of the USS Grunion gathered at the site of the USS COD, which is Grunion’s sister ship. Both subs were built by the same Connecticut company.
http://www.wtam.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=&article=4390989
Service honors crew lost in 1942 sinking:
Sunday, October 12, 2008. Stan Donaldson
The service gave relatives of the crew members a chance to recognize their loved ones’ military efforts.
The event included a tolling of the Grunion’s salvaged bell, a 21-volley salute and a casting of carnations into Lake Erie to honor their memories.
http://www.cleveland.com/community/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/122380032986750.xml&coll=2
Navy confirms sunken sub is Grunion
Seventy American sailors were aboard the U.S.S. Grunion when she left Hawaii June 30, 1942. They all died when the Grunion sunk. But no one knew how she was sunk or where she sank until recently.
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U.S.S. Grunion memorial planned
http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/local&id=6427837
From The Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Service for lost submarine USS Grunion revives memories
10/10/2008 Electric Boat Co. via Bruce Abele/Associated Press The identity of the long-lost USS Grunion, which has the same general design and vintage as the USS Cod in Cleveland, was officially confirmed last week. How the Navy submarine sank, whether by … : Read More
Activities for USS Grunion 10/10/2008
Memorial services for the USS Grunion will be at the USS Cod on North Marginal Drive, following a morning devoted to discussion of possible causes of the sub’s sinking, screening of underwater video of the wreck and other informational activities… ReadMore
Service for lost submarine USS Grunion to bring memories to life
10/10/2008
For 64 years after the USS Grunion disappeared in a sea of mystery during World War II, families of the submarine’s 70 crewmen waited and wondered. But never forgot. Two years ago, the answer to the Grunion’s fate was revealed with discovery of a .. ReadMore
Navy confirms lost WWII sub has been found
The Navy has confirmed the wreckage of a sunken vessel found last year off the Aleutians Islands is that of the USS Grunion, which disappeared during World War II. Underwater video footage and pictures captured by an expedition hired by sons of the…Â Â Read More
All Recent USS Grunion News Stories:
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Many USS Grunion Videos:
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Many USS Grunion Images:
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Pittsford woman recalls loss of brother in sunken sub
NICOLE LEE • STAFF WRITER • JANUARY 27, 2009
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PITTSFORD — Lila Pancoast Beardsley was only 7 years old when her big brother Jack enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1936.
Six years later, Jack Pancoast was among a crew of 70 men who died aboard the USS Grunion, a 312-foot submarine that sank during a skirmish with a Japanese cargo ship during WWII. Before it went down, the submarine torpedoed two Japanese submarine chasers.
Jack Edwin Pancoast was 25 years old.
Beardsley doesn’t remember a lot about her brother. She distinctly remembers her mother, also named Lila, weeping when the family received the news.
“Like any other mother, she took it hard,” Beardsley said.
The Navy confirmed that the submarine had disappeared, but for years couldn’t determine its location. Most thought the story of the Grunion sank with the submarine. The bodies of the crew weren’t recovered; the families couldn’t bury their dead.
More than six decades later, the adult sons of Lt. Mannert Abele, commander of the USS Grunion, located the vessel. Machines with sonar and high definition camera capability were used to find the Grunion buried 3,000 feet underwater near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Trips were conducted in 2006 and 2007 to authenticate that it was in fact the submarine.
The vessel was too deep to be raised, but the discovery motivated three women — known affectionately as the “sub ladies” — to spend two years tracking down a relative for each member of the Grunion crew. The sub ladies lost a relative on the Grunion as well.
Carmine Parziale was a torpedo man on the Grunion. His niece, Mary Bentz, a sub lady from Bethesda, Md., has been intimately involved with the Grunion project.
“I feel that my immediate family grew by 70 families,” she said.
Volunteers found Lila Beardsley through another brother, Robert Knight, who lives in Beardsley’s home state of Pennsylvania. When Knight called his sister with the news, she was shocked to find out someone knew what happened to Jack.
The weekend of Oct. 10-12, Lila Beardsley, 79, and her husband, Raymond, 83, were among 300 people who attended a three-day memorial ceremony in Cleveland, the location of the USS Cod, a submarine similar in design to the Grunion.
Guests were honored at a banquet, and ventured through the Cod. At a memorial service, Bentz read the name of each of the 70 members of the Grunion crew.
Beardsley, gripping a red carnation, stood on the deck of the Cod with the other relatives and threw her flower overboard, wishing a final farewell to her brother.
“You could hear a pin drop,” she said. “There weren’t any dry eyes.”
Wanting to know more about a brother-in-law he never met, Raymond Beardsley secured the military personnel records of Jack Pancoast, who received a Purple Heart from the Navy. The Beardsleys knew Pancoast married a Filipino woman named Julia, but found out the couple had a son. The boy was born June 17, 1940.
Raymond Beardsley, and the sub ladies, are now looking for the son but haven’t found his whereabouts.
Connections to the Grunion have also extended abroad. Bentz said contact has been made with the wife of a commander of one of the Japanese submarine chasers sunk by a Grunion torpedo.
A Web site, http://www.ussgrunion.com, has been created, detailing the history of the submarine and the extraordinary story that led to its discovery, said Bruce Abele of Massachusetts, who updates the site.
Unbelievable coincidences and connections ultimately lead to discovery of the Grunion, a tale that continues to unfold.
“In all honesty, unless you’ve experienced it, it’s hard to describe,” Abele said.
NLEE@DemocratandChroncile.com
Bob Dotson
NBC News
Friday, January 9, 2009
A woman who has outlived a mystery after six decades has finally learned how her husband — a crewman on a sunken U.S. Navy submarine — died, and can now move on with her life, at the age of 91.
Caroline Colson last saw her husband Steve Surofchek 66 years ago went he went off to war and vanished.
Steve was just 16 when he joined the Navy. He was the cook on the U.S.S. Grunion, and served 70 men for 12 years.
“I guess I fell in love with all of him,” Colson said. “He did the cooking at home too.”
The Grunion disappeared off the coast of Alaska in 1942, while patrolling the ocean between Alaska and Japan.
No one knew where it had gone, until three brothers could do what the U.S. Navy could not — they found the Grunion.
The sons of the submarine’s captain, Lt. Cmdr. Jim Abele, were determined to find all the missing dads.
The turning point in the search came when a Japanese historian found an account of the Grunion’s last battle.
Japanese eyewitnesses say the Grunion was surfacing, trying to finish off a cargo ship it had torpedoed, but the freighter fired back 84 times.
All that was left of the submarine was a dull thud — and then silence that stretched six decades.
Abele’s sons located the wreckage on the side of a volcano a mile beneath the sea. The sub was scattered in bits and pieces, like a board game that ended angrily.
The sons were told that by then, the bones of the missing seamen would have totally been dissolved.
Surofchek’s daughter Pat was 3-years-old when her dad’s submarine became one of the biggest mystery’s of World War II.
The only thing left of her father’s ship is a bell.
“It was like touching him,” Pat said while touching the bell.
At a memorial for the Grunion, Caroline Colson got out of her wheelchair and marched to the deck of the sub for a final farewell.
Although the new year already brings a year of closure for her, she cannot forget her first love.
Colson never moved her home, so her husband could find her if he ever came back — she was looking for him every day.
“I’m still watching,” Colson said.