By Arthur Foulkes
SULLIVAN — The Sherman Theater on the town square in Sullivan was showing a double feature that warm December Sunday in 1941.
Sonner Faught, then a senior at Sullivan High School, was among several people in the theater, which was showing Billy Conn as “The Pittsburgh Kid” and Warren William in “Secrets of the Lone Wolf,” according to the Dec. 6, 1941, Sullivan Daily Times.
Suddenly, the movie stopped and a world-changing announcement was made.
“They shut the movie off and announced that Pearl Harbor had been bombed,” said Faught, now 85. Within moments, everyone went outside the theater to talk about the important news they just learned, he said.
Earlier that day, about 360 Japanese planes attacked U.S. military installations at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
By the time Faught and the other folks back home heard the news, another Sullivan county native, Paul Nash, then 26, was probably already dead. Nash had been serving on board the USS Oklahoma, which was damaged beyond repair.
“He was probably on deck” when he was killed, said Lisa Ridge, Nash’s granddaughter and a teacher at Sullivan Middle School. “I hope he was.”
Ridge hopes her grandfather, who was in charge of the ship’s 14-inch guns, was on deck when he died because the alternatives include being trapped below deck where many sailors died slowly from a lack of oxygen, she said. Those who survived that nightmare are known as “cut-outs,” because rescuers literally cut holes into the devastated ship to get them out, she said.
In all, about 2,390 American servicemen died in the attack on Pearl Harbor 68 years ago Monday. More than 1,000 others were wounded.
“I think everybody was just shocked to the point that you didn’t know what to say,” Faught said when asked what it was like immediately after learning the news. He and a group of four or five friends walked from the Sherman Theater to the grass of the Sullivan County Courthouse lawn. There they talked about what they had heard and what it would mean for their lives.
“I think we all realized that our future contained some military service,” Faught said.
Sonner Faught, commander of the American Legion Post 139 in Sullivan, was 17 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. When he turned 18, he tried to volunteer for military service with a friend from Sullivan but was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps, in which he served in North Africa and Italy for 31 months, he said.
The attack on Pearl Harbor, Faught believes, affected the way many people thought about military service, making them more willing and determined. “I think it had a big influence on our feeling toward service,” he said.
The attack on Pearl Harbor also has a special, personal, meaning for Ridge, who tries hard to explain the importance of the day of “infamy” to her middle school students each year. The attack is receiving less and less space in social studies books, Ridge said. But in her classroom, the subject is taught every year.
Over the years, Ridge, who spoke at the groundbreaking and dedication of the USS Oklahoma memorial, has become friends with many survivors of the Oklahoma, one of whom is planning to speak to her students this spring, she said.
“They are my surrogate grandfathers,” Ridge said of the men who served with her late grandfather on the Oklahoma.
For Sonner Faught, the only other news he has heard in his life that compared with the news he heard in the Sherman Theater that sunny winter day was the news of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he said. “It was just one of those things you don’t dream about happening. … It’s something everyone needs to remember and honor the sacrifices that were made.”
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
