Remembering Arnold Holm

It took 39 years, but Sunday at Ocean Beach’s Port 'N' Starboard, a memorial service was .

“His soul has been at rest for a long time now,” said Army Col. John "Jack" Kennedy, who served with Holm in Vietnam. “May our souls finally rest as well, knowing that he has finally come home.”

But for family and his best friend, there will never be a sense of closure, they said. And while a burial at Arlington Cemetery this week will be nice, the memory of “Arnie” will stay forever, wife Margarete Holm said.

“He really lives in here,” Margarete Holm said, patting a reporter’s chest. “He is not just a few remains to be put in a casket. He will always be in our hearts.”

The Event

Approximately 200 people filled ’s Port 'N' Starboard to hear from Arnold Holm’s best friend, local politicians and the Waterford High School teacher who was instrumental in Holm's remains being found. The speeches become emotional at times, with none provoking more tears than a tribute by lifelong friend Bill Cavalieri.

Cavalieri told the story of Holm, a high school athlete who graduated with nine varsity letters, who lived for the next challenge, and impersonated Elvis. No burial, no service will ever provide closure for losing somebody like Holm, Cavalieri said.

 “There can never be closure when you lose someone like Arnie,” he said. “Never.”

But this was “as close as we are going to get,” Holm's sister Margaret Brewster said. And it was touching to have Holm’s old high school friends, military comrades and people who had never met Holm, but worked hard to find his body, come together, she said.

“It's wonderful,” Brewster said. “People really came out from the woodwork. I really didn’t expect this many people.”

Waterford High School teacher Brett Arnold and former U.S. Congressman and Vietnam veteran Rob Simmons, both of whom were influential in getting Holm’s body brought home, gave speeches. Arnold said although he never knew Holm, “he has rarely left his thoughts,” and Simmons quoted the soldier’s creed.

“I will never leave a fallen comrade,” Simmons said, quoting the creed directly. “We all wanted to believe America would never leave a fallen comrade… Thank God, thank God, (Holm’s) home at last.”

Short Background

On June 11, 1972, Holm, a helicopter pilot, was killed in action after his aircraft was shot down in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Holm’s body was not  recovered.

Cavalieri and Holm’s family pushed the American government to search for Holm’s body. In 2002, Cavalieri gave a speech to Arnold’s high school civics class, and soon Waterford High School students took up the charge.

Soon, politicians added to the search, especially Simmons. The crash site was found in 2006, and this year, Holm, along with the two other men in his helicopter, were positively identified in a “group identification.”

Holm and the other two men will be buried at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia this week.

Town Remembering Holm?

At the end of his speech, Cavalieri asked the Town of Waterford to name something after Holm.

“No one individual has brought as much honor to the Town of Waterford as Arnie,” he said. “Forget about the politics, and do the right thing.”

, so as things are completed, it would be appropriate to name athletic fields and parts of the school after Wateford's heroes, such as Holm, First Selectman Dan Steward said in an interview after the ceremony. The Board of Education has refused to do that in the past though, he said.

“They need to get it done instead of talking about it,” Steward said. “But traditionally, they’ve avoided getting it done.”

Board of Education members Jody Nazarchyk and Kathleen McCarty, both of whom were at the event, agreed. First, the protocol for naming a piece of a school after somebody has to go through the policy committee, but it needs to get done, they both said.

“It needs to go through the proper channels,” McCarty said. “But we will bring it into the policy committee.”