A Navy veteran who died during the attack on Pearl Harbor will posthumously receive a high school diploma eighty years after dropping out of Chimacum Junior/Senior High School to fight in WWII.

Seaman 1st Class Ralph Henry Keil was aboard the USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese torpedoes struck the battleship, capsizing it within minutes. The devastation of the attack made the reality of recovering and identifying the remains of the men hopeless. Until recently, Keil was classified as missing in action.

Of the 429 crew members aboard who lost their lives that fateful morning, only 35 had been successfully identified. The remains of the unidentified were buried as “Unknowns” in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

In 2015, The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) founded the USS Oklahoma Project, a disinterment and identification project attempting to identify the unaccounted for veterans.

Four years later, in February 2019, mitochondrial DNA testing successfully determined that Keil was one of the sailors who tragically died aboard the USS Oklahoma.

In September, Keil’s remains were shipped in a flag-draped casket and flown from Honolulu to Seattle. He will be forever memorialized at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent.  

Before enlisting to fight for his country, Keil was a regular student at Chimacum High School. He tormented defenses as the football team’s light-footed halfback and confidently showcased his Cowboy Blue letter on game days. He was an ambitious senior preparing for college and hoped someday to be an aviator.

But Keil was a proud American. Six months after Germany invaded Poland and WWII officially began, Keil felt a call to action and dropped out of Chimacum High School, just three months shy of graduation. Alongside his closest friend, Earl Kimmons, Keil enlisted in the Navy and was shipped out to San Diego for training in March of 1940, before ultimately being stationed in Hawaii.

After Keil was finally laid to rest in September, the Chimacum School Board decided to honor the veteran. During the school’s annual Veterans Day assembly, students and faculty paid tribute to Keil by proclaiming November 8, 2024, “Ralph Henry Keil Day.” The school district will award him with an honorary diploma, and he will graduate from Chimacum High School with the Class of 2025 in June.

When the story came to light in September, Superintendent Scott Mauk said that he reached out to Keil’s cousin, Kathie Keil Crozier, to see if the family wished to collaborate with the school to commemorate his life.

“It became clear to us that creating a board proclamation and giving Ralph his diploma was important to bringing Ralph home to Chimacum,” Mauk said. “Commemorating the life and service of Ralph Henry Keil was essential to our community. We also believe we need to take every opportunity we can, to ensure the memory of seminal American events like Pearl Harbor are kept alive for our students.”

Dr. Kristina Mayer, Chair of the Chimacum School District Board of Directors, said that the board recognized the important opportunity to honor Keil and find closure for the family and community.

“The Chimacum school board thought it was an important opportunity to honor Ralph Keil, who sacrificed his young life for his country, and to honor his family who went for so many years without being able to bring closure to Ralph’s death, without his remains being identified and returned,” Mayer said.

Principal Ryan Stevens hosted the Veterans Day assembly with student presenters Taylor Frank and Angelise Pratt, who are seniors, along with sophomores Seth Nielsen, Ethan Perovich and Lorelei Turner. John Nuchia of the Cowboy band closed out the procession with a rendition of “Taps” in Seaman 1st Class Ralph Henry Keil’s honor.