Glenn Lane interred on USS Arizona

Close family and friends gathered Sept. 12 at the World War II Valor in the Pacific Monument in Hawaii to say their final farewell to retired Navy Master Chief Glenn Lane.

Lane’s remains were interred aboard the USS Arizona, in gun turret 4, the 36th Pearl Harbor survivor to be interred there.

“You can see turret 3 sticking out of the water and the fourth one is just past that,” said Trish Lane Anderson, one of Lane’s  daughters who helped arrange the interment. “It’s kind of ironic because my dad was standing right next to gun turret 4 when he was blasted off the ship.”

Lane, a longtime resident of Oak Harbor, died last December at Skagit Valley Hospital.

Anderson said Lane’s experience on the Arizona during Pearl Harbor shaped his life and it was his dream to be buried at sea with long-gone comrades.

“I just think memories of being blown off  the ship and looking back and seeing nothing but body parts and death, smoke and fire, it was etched in his memory like it happened yesterday,” she said. “It kind of defined who he was and made him want to make something of his life because he was spared.

“He was 23 years old,” she continued. “Everything he had in the world went down with the ship. The fact that he lived and a lot of his friends didn’t, he always felt like he wanted to rejoin his shipmates.

Anderson said the internment ceremony was even more meaningful because one of the divers, Buster Stancil, had been a close personal friend of her father’s while Stancil was stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.  Stancil worked for six months to get approval to be one of the divers for the ceremony.

Lane ended up spending 30 years in the Navy, mainly as a member of combat air crews. He was NAS Whidbey’s First Command Master Chief.