First Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman was a U.S. Marine who grew up in Knoxville.
He died in November 1943 while attacking Japanese forces holed up in a bombproof shelter on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, but his remains were buried on the island and not brought back to Tennessee until last September.
His grandson, Clay Bonnyman Evans, says services like Friday morning’s on War Memorial Plaza close the wound Bonnyman’s death created.
“It shattered the family,” Evans says. “I see it in my mom’s face and my auntie’s face. Every single time he gets recognized, I think it helps just makes them a little stronger — at the broken places, as Ernest Hemingway said.”
Bonnyman was one of seven servicemen remembered in an official ceremony led by Gov. Bill Haslam to commemorate Memorial Day.
The governor also recognized the four sailors and the Marine killed by a radicalized gunman in the Chattanooga attacks last summer: Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith and Lance Corporal Skip Wells.
Haslam presented the state’s Fallen Heroes Medal to the families of Holmquist, Smith and Wells.
“Hell,” is how Well’s mother, Cathy, described the 10 months since her son was killed. “This has not been easy. … It’s a nice gesture, but it doesn’t bring our boys back. It doesn’t bring them back. So all of this, as nice as it is, it doesn’t bring them back.”
Haslam also gave the Gold Star Family Proclamation to the parents of Sergeant
Gary Reese. The Tennessee Guardsmen was killed along with two other soldiers in 2005 when their Humvee was struck by an improvised explosive device in Iraq.
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