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The Trail Is the Teacher 12: The Hills Are Alive

December 31, 2016 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

The Trail is the Teacher is Clay Bonnyman Evans’ episodic account of his 2016 Appalachian Trail thru hike.

May 2016

The rain began in earnest not long after we left Partnership Shelter and didn’t stop for the next two hours. This time I’d acquiesced to the MoonBeam-Patches “c’est la vie” approach: No coat, walked it out, I later recorded. Got utterly soaked, but lo! everything dried on my body once the rain stopped.

Appalachian Trail Virginia — The hills are alive with spring in southern Virginia. Josiah Crumrine photo.

Virginia’s varied terrain made for another long, gorgeous day of hiking as we traversed streams, railroad tracks, woodlands, hills and swoopy green meadows. The lads stopped to chow down at The Barn Restaurant, just off I-81. I straggled in a few minutes behind, slurped down a cup of coffee, and headed on, knowing they’d catch me soon enough.

Appalachian Trail quarter-way point — A quarter of the way there. Left to right, Lava, Patches and Pony.

By the time we were together again, the sun was beaming down on the rain-freshened hills of southern Virginia, reminding me of James Herriott’s Yorkshire Dales and The Shire, homeland of hobbits in Tolkien’s legendarium. Shortly after 2 p.m., on the slopes of Gullion Mountain (aka Little Brushy), we came upon a sign reading, “1/4 WAY POINT/1641<ME—GA>547.”

Whenever I’m running a marathon, swimming a mile, or engaged in other long(ish) distance activity, my brain becomes a complete geek and starts doing math to distract me. This mental tic has me constantly computing fractions and percentages—OK, I’ve done 28 out of 72 laps, so that’s 14/36ths or 7/18ths, so I’m … uh … <click, whirr,=”” long=”” division=””> … 38.8% through the workout….—I wasn’t so obsessed on the AT (thanks, scenery), but I did take note when I’d walked 5% or 10% of the total miles, and 25% felt like a major milestone. Wow, I thought, I’ve only got to walk three times the distance I’ve come so far.

But hiker Dan “Wingfoot” Bruce, author of The Thru-Hiker’s Handbook (the most popular AT guidebook before David “Awol” Miller came along), suggested that while hikers reaching New Hampshire have completed 80% of the miles, fully 50% of the effort still lies between them and Katahdin. I hadn’t read Wingfoot, and it would take me at least a couple million more steps before I grasped that all my brain’s fractions and percentages utterly failed to capture how much “farther” I really had to go.

We’d agreed to make a 26.3-mile, 4,000-foot day to Knot Maul Branch Shelter (aka Darth Maul Shelter, mile 558.5). But as we began climbing the long, grassy hills leading us into a three-mile EoDMoFo, we spontaneously began belting out all the lyrics we could remember from The Sound of Music, from the obvious—“The hiiillls are aliiiive….”—to the unmanly (“I am sixteen, going on seventeen….”) and ridiculous, “This little goatherd, etc. etc.” I’ve since learned that the hills of Virginia bring out the same lunacy among many more AT wanderers than I would have guessed.

Sleep deprived and tuckered out, we flopped at the shelter in a giddy mood. Still haunted by the nightmare of the Gatlinburg Bore and Snore, I scribbled out and posted a sign reading, “Welcome to our humble shelter. If you SNORE intrusively, please consider the courtesy of tenting. The Management.” A few non-hikers who saw a photo of me looking grumpy in front of the sign earnestly accused me of being an anti-snore-ite—C’mon, man, people can’t help it if they snore!

Appalachian Trail snore — After a sleepless night, we took precautions at the next shelter. Andrew Zapor photo.

To them I say, it’s the courtesy, stupid! As Baltimore Jack, sage of the AT, said, if you know you snore like a grizzly bear wrestling with a chain saw, don’t impose on others.

We shared the shelter that night with Olive Oil, who was clearly a kick-ass hiker (and, I learned, a purist, as was I … so far). Later, an older hiker named The Natural, along with his much-younger companion, Hashbrowns and his dog Maple Bacon Pi, showed up.

Passing Chestnut Knob Shelter (mile 567.9) the next day, I was sorry that I wouldn’t be staying. Fully enclosed and made of stone, it looked just like an old stone Yorkshire cow “byre.” Ducking out of the rain for a quick bite, we met one of those intriguing odd couples of the trail, Two-Pack, a young woman who appeared to be no more than 16 or 17, and her hiking partner First Step, who looked about 60 (if those names sound familiar, it’s because they appear in the prologue to this tale).

Eyeballing Awol’s elevations, we expected an easy afternoon. Thanks to endless PUD (pointless ups and downs), rain, mud and wet rocks, it was not. Our stay that night at jam-packed Jenkins Shelter (mile 578.6) was made memorable not just by Two-Pack, but also two weekend hikers who struggled, for literally hours, to get a fire going. As Lava put it, “It’s like they read a book about how to build a fire, but had never actually done it.”

While one kid collected soggy fuel from the surrounding area, the other began whacking away at a downed birch trunk with a large machete, despite the fact that there was (oddly) a saw hanging in the shelter. When they extracted two Ball jars, one filled with a purple powder, the other with clear liquid, from their packs and walked gingerly over to the fire pit, it was like we’d strayed into some bizarro-Harry Potter world.

“What’s that?” someone asked.

“Explosive,” one kid said, sniffing at the purple powder.

“We have to keep ’em in separate packs,” added the other, whose shirt implied he might be a U.S. Air Force recruit.

Lacking only popcorn, we hung back and watched the unfolding absurdity, trying not to laugh out loud and imagining the whirling fireball that would result if they bumped into each other on trail. We were only slightly unsettled by the thought that their hapless efforts might reduce us all to cinders.

But even through alchemy they could not summon anything but a few feeble, ill-fated flames; Jack London was surely rolling in his grave as they fanned the machete and huffed noisily at steaming piles of moss and damp twigs, generating clouds of damp smoke that immediately billowed into the shelter. I was sure “Dad” (aka Easy) would have to intervene before they choked us all, but finally, mercifully, they gave up.

Lava, who clearly—and not entirely inaccurately—seemed to see me as a 54-year-old version of that one smart-ass kid in grade school you could always egg on to do crazy shit, dared me to approach the sooty, defeated duo and bestow upon them the trail names we’d jointly devised for them. I declined.

Firestarter and Burning Man, after all, were armed with a machete and (maybe) enough explosive chemicals to blow the other hapless denizens of Jenkins Shelter to kingdom come, and if they didn’t take kindly to the names….

May 4 was another memorable day.

First, Lava’s wife Heather was driving up from Knoxville to Lickskillet Hollow on remote VA 608 to deliver a hiker feast in honor of his 28^th birthday.

It was also the day I heard that Baltimore Jack, whom I’d met at Ron Haven’s place in Franklin, N.C., died. It was not until that day that I learned he was not just some overweight dude who knew a bit about the trail, but a bona fide AT legend who had thru-hiked the trail eight times since 1995.

Leonard Adam Tarlin, aka Baltimore Jack, a trail legend who died May 4 in Franklin, N.C. Photo courtesy Appalachian Trials.

Not everyone loved Baltimore Jack. He espoused political beliefs that did not always square with those of freewheeling hiker trash. He also was savagely opinionated, never missing an opportunity, for example, to blast SOBO AT hiking and hikers. And while a friend of his, Miss Janet Hensley (another trail legend, though I was still 1,300 miles away from our first encounter) told me he’d died of a congenital heart defect, it was sadly clear that he also struggled with alcoholism.

Despite my first, ignorant impression of Jack as some kind of blowhard, the trail taught me that his opinions were all grounded in hard-won experience and a genuine desire to see thru hikers succeed. He dissed SOBO hikes, for example, because Maine and New Hampshire are so brutally challenging that many SOBOs—who lack the conditioning gained by NOBOs over the first 1,700 miles of the trail—become discouraged and quit. Over my next few town stops, I read and listened to interviews with Baltimore Jack—aka Leonard Adam Tarlin—and came to appreciate his wisdom.

Party animal that he was, I’m sure Jack would have appreciated the celebration we had that night. Heather brought us (cue “Twelve Nights of Christmas” music…”): six Wendy’s burgers, four Little Caesar’s Hot ‘n’ Ready pizzas, 14 beers, 12 sodas, two bags of Doritos, tortilla chips and guacamole, a huge package of golden Oreos (a trail favorite for me), Snickers and other candy to replenish sagging food bags, and, best of all, her homemade Oreo cheesecake.

Dressed to the nines, Patches, left, and Pony enjoy the bounty at Lava’s 28th birthday celebration in the Virginia woods. Andrew Zapor photo.

Reclining on my Z-lite pad, wearing glasses, a warm hat, 25-year-old Patagonia long johns, a rain jacket and dirt-smeared Crocs, I know I looked and smelled like a bum—but I felt like royalty.

“Pony was definitely the most talkative,” Heather wrote in her blog about being a trail widow, Spousesounds, “and I now understood why Andrew (Lava) had named his stories ‘Ponytales.’”

Yes, yes, a talkative bum … I don’t deny it.

But Heather had not come all that way merely to deliver a feast to four grimy dudes in the woods. In the morning, she would spirit Lava away for a friend’s bachelor party; he wouldn’t make it back to this happy little hollow until five days had passed. And since, as Heather wrote, our crew “had become something of a fearsome foursome, continually putting up big miles,” we would very likely be 100 or more miles gone by then.

Patches had been with Lava, off and on, since the Smokys. I hadn’t known him as long, but he was family. His understated humor, intelligence, authenticity and dry sardonicism was an integral part of our organism. Odd quadruple that we were, it worked.

“I’m going to catch you guys,” Lava vowed.

Physically, I knew he had the legs and grit to pull off day after day of 25 and 30 milers. But I would be getting off trail no later than May 18 for a run of unavoidable (and all good) Worldly obligations. By the time Lava got back on, he would have nine days, at most, to regain 100 or more miles on us. This might be the end of our time together.

“I … felt a little sad knowing that these 3 would be continuing on,” Heather wrote, “and that when Andrew returned to the trail, he would be hiking without them.”

I, too, was mourning the loss. But when he drove off with Heather the next morning, Lava would turn out to be the lucky one.

Next chapter

Millennial ‘chickenhawks’ mirror society’s abdication on war

January 8, 2016 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

America’s millennials want ground troops to fight the Islamic State in the Middle East, but when it comes to themselves, most fall back on the old classic line, “That’s not my job.”

According to a December poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, found that 60 percent of America’s 18-29-year-olds support “sending ground troops to participate in a military campaign against the Islamic State” — even as 85 percent say they definitely (62 percent) or probably would not (23 percent) join the military to fight ISIS. Just 2 percent of those surveyed had served in the military; 4 percent “definitely will join if needed” and 9 percent would “strongly consider joining.”

The internet was instantly aflame with cries of hypocrisy and “chickenhawk” in the “not me generation,” and the poll certainly seems to paint an unflattering portrait. What surprises me is that anyone is surprised.

First, young people resisting the idea of interrupting their lives to go into a war zone isn’t an anomaly; historically, it’s the rule. But more important, government and society have trained this generation to see war as something other people do.

Tens of millions of Americans born since the late 1980s have grown up in a country almost perpetually at war — with the exceptions of 1997 and 2000, some kind of military action has been under way every year of their lives.

They have experienced war as dirty work other people have to do: Less than half a percent of Americans now serve in the military. Perhaps worst of all, they have been trained by politicians to look the other way, go shopping, pay no attention to the flag-draped coffins hidden behind a curtain of cynical censorship drawn by those same politicians who don’t want anyone to know about war’s consequences.

These “chickenhawk” millennials are really no different than the people now leading the country. Republican elected officials and presidential candidates are full of hollow bravado about how to handle the Islamic State, willing to hint at using nuclear weapons — “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we are about to find out,” said Ted Cruz — or sending in ground troops (almost all of them).

Nobody in the GOP or Democratic presidential field served in the military. In all of U.S. history, just 11 presidents have not served in the military, some serving in state militias rather than federal forces. The longest drought ran from 1913 (Wilson) to 1944 (Roosevelt). Today, just over 20 percent of members of Congress have served, compared to a peak of 77 percent in 1977-78. And just 7 percent of the population are veterans, compared to 13.7 percent in 1977, a drop by almost half.

Retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis took note of the hypocrisy in a tweet he sent while watching a Dec. 16 GOP presidential debate: “My blood pressure rose when they used ‘I’ or ‘we’ to talk kicking ass since they all said no to their feet in mil boots.”

Science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein’s infamous “Starship Troopers,” a 1959 novel-slash-political lecture, seriously suggests that suffrage be extended only to discharged

Heinlein's novel imagines a future in which only those who have served in the military may vote. — Heinlein’s novel imagines a future in which only those who have served in the military may vote.

veterans, instead of “anyone who is 18 years old and has a body temperature near 37 degrees (Celsius).” But under the Constitution, there is no requirement that one must serve in the military to be elected to office.

And certainly, a history of military service doesn’t inoculate a president from making dubious (and worse) decisions about war — Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and George W. Bush all come to mind. One who didn’t, Franklin D. Roosevelt (he did try to resign as Secretary of the Navy to enlist during World War I, but President Wilson refused) arguably remains the nation’s greatest war president.

Still, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was surely right when he fretted privately(according to one of his daughters) that non-veteran presidents would be too easily manipulated and steamrolled into bad decisions by military advisors and that the increasing entanglement of business and war, the “military-industrial complex,” would likely result in ill-conceived wars.

And while the specter of the Islamic State is obscene and dangerous, today’s flocks of chickenhawks, from millennials to presidential contenders, are too ready to throw someone else at a situation that isn’t quite as simple as, “send in the Marines.”

Here’s how Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for a New American Security and former advisor to John McCain (Fontaine is no dove) told The New York Times in September:

“In Iraq, we toppled the government and did an occupation and everything went to hell. In Libya, we toppled the government and didn’t do an occupation and everything went to hell. In Syria, we didn’t topple the government and didn’t do an occupation and everything went to hell. So, broadly, this is the Middle East. Things go to hell. And we’ve got to make our way through that fact to protect our national interests, on the back of a war-weary public that doesn’t want to invest our treasure in this.”

It’s probably true that a massive-scale mobilization of American troops — consisting mostly of other people and other people’s kids, of course — could, like Tito in Yugoslavia or Saddam Hussein in Iraq, rout the Islamic State and hold the area in some semblance of order through sheer power. But such an occupation would have to be all but indefinite, because as soon as those troops leave, the old Sunni-Shia and other historic, even ancient, antagonisms will fill the vacuum. Mission creep would be hard to avoid.

“The United States could decide to go all-in with ground troops and provide the military muscle for Sunni moderates for the foreseeable future. That would start in Syria, but Obama’s advisers fear the commitment would expand to other collapsed Sunni states, such as Libya and Yemen,” David Ignatius wrote recently. “The United States, in effect, would become the governor of Sunnistan.”

And the truth is, even the best minds of the U.S. military and state department can’t be trusted to understand complex situations on the ground in such places. (For a sobering, wholly balanced — neither anti-American nor anti-Taliban — examination of the fiasco in another place of mystery, read “No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes” by Anand Gopal.)

In other words, the fondest wishes of chickenhawk millennials and politicians would have terrible costs, counted both in blood (of “other people’s kids”) and treasure: Some military experts think 100 troops killed, 500 wounded and $10 billion a month would be all but guaranteed, and it might be even worse.

As Tolstoy asked, what then must we do?

Although generals and politicians hate the idea, and 74 percent of Americans say they oppose it, the nation should move away from an all-volunteer force, perhaps via a national-service requirement that includes a military lottery and no loopholes, except for the truly disabled, as in Israel and Switzerland. (There would have to be non-military options, for moral reasons and because the U.S. military doesn’t need that many bodies).

How would this help? Here’s a rather long essay on the subject, but in short, the all-volunteer force is dangerous. It has led to a growing separation between the troops and civilians, with many in the military believing that they are superior citizens and non-military Americans the dupes of cynical propaganda campaigns leading them to proclaim all who serve are “heroes” — virtually all active-duty military and veterans openly mock this idiocy, and they should know — and thinking that clapping for soldiers in airports or slapping a yellow ribbon on the SUV somehow constitutes “support.” An all-volunteer military leads to more war, and whatever the shortcomings of mandated service, it will give a broader swath of the public pause when we are called upon to blindly support the next war.

In addition, we need politicians with spines stiffer than wet spaghetti. The current scheme, under which Congress ignores its obligation to declare war under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and presidents of both parties relish their all-but-unfettered freedom to wage war, is dishonest. Members of Congress are too chicken to take an actual vote, fearing future repercussions, thereby ceding enormous power to the executive.

From there, I propose a law mandating across-the-board tax increases on all individuals, businesses and corporations — again, no loopholes or deferments, and no more putting wars on national credit cards — once troops have been in a theater of war for 90 days, to pay for all costs stemming from the conflict, including top-notch medical and psychological care for returning soldiers. It’s past time to rip Americans who have not served in the military from the appalling, comforting, false belief that they need make no sacrifices for the wars they have been trained to cheer.

It’s easy to point a finger at Millennials, but the undeniable truth is that most Americans do the exact same thing.

The Colorado Trail: Three months later

October 13, 2015 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

I’m still thinking about the trail throughout the day. When I asked my friend Sparkle, who completed the trail with her dog Jude in 2014 and was my original inspiration to walk the Colorado Trail, when this would stop, she just laughed.

“I still think of it pretty much every day,” she said.

I’ve bought some books about other long trails, the Appalachian, Continental Divide and Pacific Crest trails, specifically, and I hope to at least be able to do some sections next year. Maybe part of the AT in spring, then do all the CDT in Colorado that I haven’t done yet. We’ll see.

In the meantime, some thoughts:

New gear is great. But I was bemused to learn that sometimes old standbys remained my best bet, especially my 25-year-old North Face base layer shirt, which has held up better than any new base layer I’ve bought since, and my trusty 10-year-old lightweight Columbia pants with zip-off legs. (Of course, someone at North Face must have figured out years ago that they make less money when they make highly durable goods, so none of the shirts I’ve bought in the intervening years lasted more than a couple of years, max. Bummer.)

Essential “non-essential” gear. I had a snotty attitude about certain pieces of gear before setting out, particularly trekking poles, which I was pretty sure I’d only ever seen being used by suburban hausfraus out for a three-mile day hike wearing too much perfume. But on Sparkle’s insistence, I borrowed a pair of Leki poles (from a former suburban hausfrau, as it turns out: me mum, though thankfully she’s not a perfumer) and I would never, ever thru-hike without them again.

Poles allowed me to use my upper body to a small degree when climbing and eased the impact of going downhill and stepping off rocks. I was also pretty sure that I’d toss my battered 12-year-old Mountain Hardwear rock gaiters — extra weight, you know — but I consider gaiters indispensable on the trail. Every time I saw a hiker parked by the side of the trail unlacing his or her shoes to dump out a rock or stick, I was grateful.

Durango was depressing because all the sudden I was dumped off the trail into this city with no obvious gathering place for hikers (like, say, the Raven’s Rest in Lake City). I didn’t know about the tradition of a free beer at Carver Brewing Co., but even that wouldn’t have lasted long enough for me.

Shortly before going on the trail, I read David Gessner’s excellent book, All the Wild That Remains, a mashup of bios about Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner and Gessner’s own thoughts about the natural world of the West (read my review here). I love this advice from the book: “Walk alone in the desert for ten days or go live on a barrier island for a while or even camp in the backcountry with bears. Not because you are going to film it or make a YouTube video about it but because of the experience itself.” When my iPhone drowned in a deluge on Segment 21, I actually became even more in tune with the trail. In addition, while part of me desperately wishes it could simply push “play” and run the whole adventure like a movie in my mind, I think much of the poetry of the experience is that it is ephemeral. The trail is a lesson in non-attachment, before, during, and after.

Some product endorsements:

I will say again that wearing Hoka One One shoes on the trail was perfect for me. I foolishly started with a pair that already had 400+ miles on them, but switched them out at Breckenridge. Early generations of these shoes fell apart way too quickly, but after nearly 400 miles from Breck-Durango, mine had suffered some minor external tearing on the uppers, and that’s it. Padding … ahhhhhh…..

While buying the new pair of Hokas at Vertical Runner in Breck, the young woman who helped me recommended Swiftwick socks. I’ve always thought socks are pretty much socks, though some wear out faster than others. I’m here to say that Swiftwick socks are amazing. They are durable, lightweight, and they wick better than any socks I’ve ever run or hiked in.

Also a shout out to my REI Quarter Dome 1 tent and my Therma-Rest Z-Lite pad, which rescued me from the hideous disaster of the Klymit Static V pad I dumped in Breck. Hated that thing.

Product endorsements over. I did not receive any compensation for these plugs.

Almost everyone I met on the trail was happy to be there, even knowing that adversity and discomfort was part of the experience. I learned not to dwell on what was going wrong (blisters, weird swelling, rain, didn’t pack enough food, etc.) but also to allow myself to feel cranky, knowing it would all pass. I never met “Carl,” the gloomy Eeyore guy on the CT 2015 Thru-hike Facebook page, but damn, why bother hiking if all you can do is complain? And then there was the man I thought of as “Gun Guy,” who burst onto the FB

Colorado Trail 2015 — The freedom of filth.

page to let everybody know not to be afraid of the pistol he would be packin’. I didn’t meet him, but I met others who did, and basically, he did the same thing on the trail, barging into camp waving his gun around (although now he was claiming that “my wife made me bring it along, for bears” — maybe he got the hint that nobody was impressed?) To me, if you start down the trail in an attitude of fear, you probably aren’t going to have much fun.I loved being out of touch, not knowing what was going on in the world. And I learned that I really am a loner — except when I’m not. I loved meeting hikers in town, and threemonths later, I feel bereft of that community. I also quite literally find myself skipping showers for a couple of days in a feeble effort to recreate something, anything, from the trail. But itchy scalps and blackened fingernails don’t do the trick.

I miss it. But that, too, is part of the experience.

UPDATE Remains of Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr. return to Knoxville

September 26, 2015 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

Public invited to attend memorial lying-in-honor and funeral Saturday and Sunday

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The remains of 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman, Jr., arrived in Knoxville from Hawaii Sept. 25, bringing his family’s 72-year odyssey closer to conclusion.

The remains of 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman, Jr. arrive in Knoxville, Tenn. on Sept. 25, 2015. Photo by Jeremy Edward Shiok.

Bonnyman was killed on Nov. 22, 1943 in the Battle of Tarawa. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. His remains, along with those of hundreds of other Marines, were lost after they were buried on Tarawa following the fighting.

His parents, Alexander Bonnyman, Sr. and Frances Berry Bonnyman, spent years trying to learn the location of their son’s remains and have them brought to Knoxville, where he grew up. Others, including his younger brother, George Gordon Bonnyman, and daughter Frances Bonnyman Evans, continued the quest for decades without success.

“I do want my son’s remains returned to Knoxville, Tennessee. … If any further or additional request or advice is needed to insure (sic) his remains being returned to me here, I shall appreciate your writing to me,” Alexander Bonnyman, Sr. wrote to Marine Commandant Lt. Gen. A.A. Vandegrift in 1944.

An American Graves Commission Service mission to Tarawa in 1946 was unable to locate more than half of the Marines and U.S. Navy personnel killed in the battle. In 1949, the Bonnyman family was informed that Lt. Bonnyman’s remains were “unrecoverable.”

In 2007, Mark Noah, founder of History Flight, Inc., began researching the long-lost graves of Tarawa. The Florida-based nonprofit group began sending teams of field researchers to the island of Betio, where the battle took place, in 2008., An archaeological team led by Kristen N. Baker located the site of Cemetery 27, where Bonnyman and 39 other Marines were recorded as having been buried, in March. When the team concluded its work in July, it had recovered 35 sets of remains from the island.

Alexander Bonnyman, Jr. was born May 2, 1910 in Atlanta. He was raised in Knoxville and attended Princeton University. He was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and operating a copper mine near Santa Rosa when he joined the Marine Corps Reserve in July 1942.

Public events

Lt. Bonnyman’s casketed remains will lie in honor at the East Tennessee Veteran’s Memorial, World’s Fair Park, Knoxville, Tenn. from 2:30 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, with a short memorial service from 2:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Lt. Bonnyman will be buried in a family service with full military honors and a flyover at noon, Sunday, Sept. 27 at Berry Highland Memorial Cemetery, 5315 Kingston Pike in Knoxville.

NEWS Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency confirms ID of Bonnyman remains

August 4, 2015 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in Hawaii today confirmed the identity of the remains of First Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr., recovered May 29 from the island of Betio, Tarawa Atoll, Republic of Kiribati.

The skeletal remains of First Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr., with gold dental work visible. Photo by Clay Bonnyman Evans.

Johnie E. Webb, deputy to the commander of DPAA, said by telephone that the agency had confirmed the identity based on a dental comparison, the legal standard for identification for the U.S. military.

“This was a really good, distinctive dental profile,” Webb said, noting that Bonnyman — who at 33 was older than most of the Marines killed in the battle, and whose prominent family owned coal mines in Tennessee — had numerous gold dental restorations. “Clearly, he came from a family that could afford to do that kind of dental work. He’s very unique from a dental aspect.”

Bonnyman, who was killed in the battle of Tarawa, was one of hundreds of Marines and Navy personnel whose remains were never recovered after the fighting. He posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his actions on Nov. 22, 1943.

An archaeological team from History Flight, Inc., a Florida-based nonprofit, discovered the location of long-lost “Cemetery 27” and began exhuming and documenting the remains of some three dozen Marines, including those of Bonnyman, on Betio in March.

Dr. David Senn, director of the Center for Education and Research in Forensics in the University of Texas at San Antonio Health Science Center’s forensic odontology department, went to Tarawa in June to conduct formal dental comparisons on the remains from Cemetery 27. He wrote June 16 that, “Based upon the findings and the correlations between the antemortem evidence for Alexander Bonnyman, Jr. and the postmortem evidence (of the remains), we conclude that the skeletal remains … are the remains of 1st Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman, Jr., DOB 2 May 1910.”

Senn, diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, fellow in the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and a member of the American Society of Forensic Odontology, noted that, “The concordance between the antemortem and postmortem and the distinctiveness of (Bonnyman’s) extensive gold restorations is exceptional and extraordinary” and “The accumulation of factors considered in this comparison is striking.”

DPAA’s confirmation of the identity clears the way for the agency to issue a new death certificate to the family and arrange for the transfer of Bonnyman’s remains. Bonnyman will be buried in a family plot in a public graveside ceremony at Highland Memorial Cemetery on Sept. 27. His niece, the Rev. Anne Bonnyman of Asheville, N.C., and nephew, Deacon Robert McKeon, of France, will lead an ecumenical service that also will include full military honors and a gun salute by the United States Marines Corps.