AGAWAM - The plaintive strains of "Taps" and a devoted contingent of military and friends and family on Saturday followedHarold Marney to his final resting place, 70 years after his death on the PT-109 torpedo patrol boat during World War II.

Family members said Marney, of Springfield, was just 19 and had been on the boat for a week when a Japanese destroyer exploded into the craft near the Solomon Islands. On board was a 26-year-old future U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who survived along with 10 other crew members.

Despite his meteoric rise in politics to the nation's highest office, Kennedy never forgot the experience and kept in touch with family members of the fallen sailors over the years.

Dennis Harkins, 71, of Springfield, was one of two of Marney's nephews who attended the memorial service at Agawam's Veterans' Cemetery.

"We didn't talk about it on Saturday over dinner. But my mother told occasional stories about him. As I understand it, he was the one who sounded the alarm," said Harkins.

Harkins retains a marker for Marney that Kennedy gave to Harkins' grandmother.

"If Kennedy hadn't been involved and gone on to be President, poor Harold would have just been another poor soul lost at sea," Harkins said. "This gives us some kind of closure. He's home now."

Instead, Marney received a headstone at the immaculately kept Agawam Veterans Cemetery and received full honors on Saturday.

Brian Willette, of South Hadley, junior vice commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Hampden County District 7, said Marney is one of 94,000 American military members whose remains were never recovered from battlefields at land and sea.

His headstone in Agawam sits upon a knoll designated as the "in Memory section for service members who were never recovered," Willette told a large group of veterans and supporters gathered at the ceremony.

Marney was among those considered "buried at sea."

"This was a very personal matter for John F. Kennedy and he never got over it," Willette said.

Marney's younger nephew, Francis Piorek, 51, of Tolland, Conn., said he never thought to ask his mother (who died in 1990) whether his uncle had a gravestone of any sort. However, he was hungry for information about his extended family and posted some details on a genealogy web site in 2003. The posting led Willette to him a decade later.

"Brian called me in March and told me what they were doing. It's really nice to know people still care and think about this," Piorek said.

Armand Proulx, 83, was a distant chum of Marney while the two worked at the former Bud Trumbull's golf course in East Springfield in the late 1930s.

Proulx, a retired minister, said he didn't know Marney well since they were several years apart, but felt drawn to the ceremony.

"I remember him as very quiet. I liked him," Prouxl said.

Harold W Marney