A Virginia real estate agent has taken on a project to identify the remains of 85 or more sailors and Marines killed aboard the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.
Kevin Kline grew up hearing stories about his great-uncle, Robert Kline, a 22-year-old sailor who perished aboard the USS Arizona when it was destroyed by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He collected photos of him in his Navy uniform and framed the Feb. 6, 1942, front page of the local newspaper in western New York that blared ‘Olean Boy Dies On Arizona’ in a banner headline. He thought occasionally about his great-uncle’s final terrifying moments.
Kline knew that in recent years the unidentified remains of other sailors killed in the Pearl Harbor attack and buried at the Punchbowl had been identified using DNA analysis that connected them to family members. The vast majority of several hundred previously unidentified sailors killed on the USS Oklahoma, for instance, were identified through a project begun in 2016 by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency .
But Kline, who owns a real estate company with his wife in Northern Virginia, was not deterred and began reaching out to families of the Arizona casualties. Six months later, he has engaged 182 family members in his effort and 44 have sent DNA samples to the Navy and Marines for their database. Many others are in the process, Kline said, and will soon add to the growing total.Teri Mann-Whyatt, 52, was one of the first people Kline contacted, and she signed on with enthusiasm.
Kline says he’s driven by his great-uncle’s memory and by a sense of patriotism. But he wouldn’t mind if the DPAA and Navy took over the work.
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