By Nicole Bowman-Layton
EDENTON — Felton J. Outland Sr. graduated from Sunbury High School in Gates County in 1943. In July 1943 — a few months later — he enlisted in the Navy.
He first saw combat in November 1943 at the Gilbert Islands, only four months after he left home. Marines died around him. He manned his 40-millimeter anti-aircraft gun and did not stop.
More than 80 years later, his son stood before a room of veterans and their families at American Legion Post 40 and tried to put that moment into words.
“He has told me numerous times over the years,” Felton Outland Jr. said, pausing, “that this is when he realized what a terrible mess he had got himself into.”
Edward G. Bond American Legion Post 40, on West Queen Street, hosted its 2026 Memorial Day observance Monday, May 25, at a packed post hall. Veterans in unit caps sat beside young children. Law enforcement officers and government officials filled the rows alongside Gold Star families and neighbors who came to bear witness. The ceremony, moved indoors due to the weather, blended patriotic tradition, local military history and deeply personal stories of sacrifice — all on the eve of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
‘They wrote the same check’
Commander Ed Mathews opened the service by reminding attendees of Memorial Day’s origins following the Civil War, and its recognition by Congress in 1971 as a national day of remembrance.
“Every veteran has a story to tell,” Mathews said. “Some veterans will openly tell you their stories, while others will prefer to keep their thoughts and memories to themselves.”
“On the eve of the 250th anniversary of our great nation, and as a veteran and as commander of the post — thank you for joining with me and all veterans in declaring this day to honor those who did not return home to tell their stories.”
Post Chaplain Calvin Capehart delivered the invocation and benediction. The ceremony also included musical tributes and memorial wreath presentations honoring fallen service members.
‘Many possibilities. Many failures.’
One of the two featured speakers was Rae Ohlert, a U.S. Navy veteran and Edenton resident who served as Petty Officer Third Class aboard the USS Dixie. Her choice of subject was deliberate: Memorial Day was first observed nationwide on May 30, 1868, as “Decoration Day,” when Americans placed flowers on the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers. Abraham Lincoln was the president who led the nation through that war and spoke most powerfully about honoring those who died in it. He was assassinated in April 1865 — he never saw the holiday his war made necessary.
“A veteran is someone who, at one point, wrote a blank check made payable to the United States of America for any amount up to and excluding their life,” she said. “I didn’t say that. That’s somebody else’s saying. But it’s very apropos.”
She drew a portrait of Lincoln that she said most Americans never learned in school — his many careers and reinventions, his failures and personal losses before the presidency. She closed with a full reading of the Gettysburg Address: that those who died for this country “shall not have died in vain,” and that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
‘We got quite a history’
Mathews used the ceremony to spotlight several North Carolina service members whose stories he said deserve wider recognition.
He defined a hero as “a person who is willing to put the needs of others before their own — often acting to help others despite personal risk and without expecting anything in return.” Mathews named several who met that definition.
Pfc. Dan Bullock of Goldsboro altered his birth certificate at age 14 to enlist in the Marine Corps, needing money to support his younger sister. He arrived in Vietnam in May 1969 and was killed 21 days later at age 15 — the youngest American serviceman killed during the Vietnam War.
Pfc. Jacklyn H. Lucas of Plymouth, who also lied about his age and enlisted at age 14, stowed away on a ship to Iwo Jima and threw himself on not one but two enemy grenades during the Battle of Iwo Jima. He survived. He received the Medal of Honor at age 17 and remains the youngest Marine to receive the nation’s highest military honor in World War II. He died on June 5, 2008.
Sgt. Max Thompson of Bethel (in Haywood County) received the Medal of Honor for halting a German counterattack near Herrlisheim, Germany in October 1944 — and then did it again the next day when the Germans advanced a second time. He died on Nov. 30, 1996.
Pvt. Pomeroy Parker of Gates County received the Medal of Honor for bravery during the Spanish-American War.
“I don’t know if these guys are crazy or what,” Matthews said warmly. “But we got quite a history.”
The ceremony also recognized this year’s memorial bricks to be added to the Chowan County Veterans Memorial, honoring George H. Tolster, USAF, 1975–1981; George P. Tolster, U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, 1941–1946; Gerald D. Rahal, U.S. Navy, 1968–1972; and Sgt. Larry G. Caskey, U.S. Marine Corps, Vietnam, 1968. The bricks were to be laid after the event.
For more, see the letter by Wayne Caskey about Larry Caskey, Edenton native and veteran, below this article.
‘Oh Lord. Not now.’
Mathews introduced the USS Indianapolis with quiet gravity.
“Just after midnight on July 30, 1945,” he told the room, “just days after delivering components of the atomic bomb from California to the Pacific Islands, in the most highly classified naval mission of the war, a ship was sailing alone in the center of the Philippine Sea when she was struck by two Japanese torpedoes.”
Three hundred men went down with the ship. Nearly 900 made it into the water. For the next five days and four nights, almost 300 miles from the nearest land, the survivors battled injuries, sharks and dehydration. Only 316 would survive.
One of them lived just up NC 32 from Edenton, in Sunbury.
“Today there’s only one of them left living,” Outland Jr. told the crowd. “Harold Bray. He turns 99 on June 15. He’s the only guy living out of the 317 that survived the sinking.”
Outland Sr. had enlisted shortly after graduating from Sunbury High School and was assigned to the Indianapolis, where he manned a 40-millimeter anti-aircraft gun. Of the 10 battle stars the ship earned before it sank, he was onboard for eight. In March 1945, a kamikaze pilot’s bomb passed through the hull and exploded underneath, sending the ship to Mare Island, California, for repairs. The ship left Mare Island on July 16 carrying secret cargo the crew was not told about: components of the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima.
Fourteen days later, at midnight, two Japanese torpedoes changed everything.
Outland Jr. read from his father’s written account:
“I looked over the 40-millimeter guns where the ammunition was stored, and it was falling out of the gun shield. I figured it was time to go. I took off the phone and started off the ship on the port side. The water met me on the main deck, and I went down with the ship. I was sucked under the water. My feet got tangled in a line or a phone wire, but came loose in a few seconds. I had to let go of what air I had in my lungs and thought to myself, ‘Oh Lord. Not now.’ But in a short time, that good old kapok life jacket shot me right out of the water. The ship was gone.”
Outland Sr. surfaced next to a stack of life rafts. He and one other man separated them and gathered 17 men across four. The sea was covered in fuel oil. The sharks appeared on the first day.
“Each day they talked a little less,” his son said. “And by day four, things were getting bad. No rain. No ship. And they were losing hope.”
On the evening of the fifth day, a low-flying aircraft spotted the rafts. The USS Ringness picked them up — all of them having to be carried aboard. Outland Sr.’s raft was found more than 30 miles from the main group of survivors.
“He was very lucky to have even been found,” his son said.
Mathews noted that Outland Sr. and his raftmates were not only the last survivors off the USS Indianapolis found alive but also were believed to be the last Americans of World War II rescued at sea following enemy action.
Felton J. Outland Sr. died in 2016. He was survived by his family in Sunbury — and by the story his son finally told on a Memorial Day morning, in front of the people who understand best what it cost.
The ones with no stone
Earlier in the ceremony, wreaths were placed to honor the branches of service represented at the Chowan County Veterans Memorial in Veterans Park. The Merchant Marines had no wreath. They have no stone at the memorial.
Mathews made sure they were not forgotten.
He said the prompt came from a veteran who approached him after the 2025 ceremony to raise the subject. This year, he worked the group into the program.
During World War II, 9,521 Merchant Marines were killed, and more than 12,000 were wounded. Though they ran supplies through some of the most dangerous waters of the war, they were classified as civilians and did not receive veteran benefits status until 1987, more than four decades after the war ended.
“If you look at the percentages, they lost more than all the combined forces,” Mathews said. “They actually lost one in 26. Percentage-wise, they have the highest casualty rate.”
On a day defined by the question of who gets remembered, it was a reminder that sometimes it takes someone standing up at a ceremony and say a name out loud.
Capehart closed with his benediction: “Let us depart in peace, and in love and in charity with our neighbors. May we be joined together in the common goals of service to our country and our God.”
About Larry G. Caskey
by Wayne Caskey
Larry was a happy-go-lucky individual as a child but had a wild streak about him. When given the choice between jail and the military by a judge, he chose the U.S.M.C. As it turned out, it was a lose-lose situation.
When he returned from Vietnam, he was not the same person and for the next 35 years had to fight his demons. Throughout this, he ended up being a Lt. in the prison located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The one who should have been behind bars ended up on the other side of them. Go figure.
Eventually, Vietnam caught up with him and when arriving to work at the prison, he found himself in a fierce gun battle with the Viet Cong. Another correctional officer who was on duty went to the captain and said something was wrong with Caskey and had the captain listen to the radio.
Larry was sending out some type of military codes over the radio. Fortunately, the captain, who also was a vet, knew what was happening and went and found Larry and brought him back to reality. He was given a medical leave from his job, then disappeared. No one knew where he was for over two weeks.
I received a phone call from him and he told me to come to Washington D.C. I was on the next available flight. He met me at the airport around midnight, and we went straight to the Vietnam Memorial. No words could do justice to what happened, as it was a cold, snowy evening. It was eerie to say the least.
On the last day after visiting the Vietnam Museum, we were sitting in our room and had just turned the TV on when Bagger Vance came on. That did it! Larry broke down crying and sobbing uncontrollably in the middle of it. When we left D.C., Larry was a changed man. He took a very active part in the raising of his grandchildren, from dressing up and looking totally stupid and having a tea party with them, to eventually taking them hunting. He really enjoyed his last few years.
When I first arrived in Edenton, I went to Hicks Field to watch a baseball game. Larry was in the hospital at that time, and I called him from the bleachers, and we reminisced about our times as boys, laughing and having a good time here. That was the last time I spoke to my brother, as he died the next morning.
Even though he is interred at Angel Fire Vietnam Veterans Memorial in New Mexico, I felt I had to have a brick in honor of him here, as Edenton was where he was born.
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