The goodbyes came nearly a lifetime apart.
Eleanor Keller sat quietly at the side of her brother’s casket Wednesday at Fort Logan National Cemetery, eyes steady on the flag-draped coffin, as if she didn’t want Navy Ensign Robert Keller to leave her sight again.
Not after what happened before.
The first goodbye came 64 years earlier, when Robert Keller was 24 and shipped out as a Naval reservist during World War II.
The Colorado native died a few months later, after the plane in which he was flying was shot down and crashed into a volcano as part of a long-forgotten battle with Japanese forces on Kiska Island, a spot in the Aleutian Island chain that stretches from mainland Alaska through the Pacific Ocean.
The bodies of Robert Keller and six other airmen were discovered about a year afterward and buried at the site.
Nearly 60 years later, a biologist discovered the burial site amid harsh terrain. That led to an eventual military recovery mission and an identification of the men’s remains.
Which led to Wednesday’s long- awaited final goodbye, the one Eleanor never dreamed of saying two generations ago.
“I thought about him every day at first,” Keller’s 86-year-old sister said. “It’s just wonderful that I got him back.”
A horse-drawn hearse lurched forward as Robert Keller’s coffin was placed inside. The pop of his wooden casket against metallic rollers rang out.
A few dozen sailors saluted.
Chaplain Jim Chapman leaned in to Keller’s nephew, John Robert Keller.
“This is a good day, a good day,” the chaplain said. “Don’t be sad.”
The men and women lined up. The carriage driver asked if everyone was ready. Chapman gave a thumbs up.
Then they walked.
A picture-perfect day
Keller was a reporter for the Wichita Eagle when he signed up for the Naval Reserve in 1941. Perhaps this was an end befitting a former professional journalist- a story once without an ending, suddenly made whole by a stroke of luck or maybe fate.
Whatever it was, Keller’s sister wished their parents could have seen the day her brother was buried: the azure sky and the doves, the bagpiper, the men and women in uniform.
Earl Clark approached Eleanor as she stood near her brother’s coffin.
The retired lieutenant colonel from the then-87th Mountain Infantry Regiment touched her hand.
“My unit was the first to find him,” Clark said. “I wasn’t there. The burial team came later.”
Eleanor raised her head.
“I just wanted to have the opportunity to tell you that I was part of that scene.”
“How was the weather?” Eleanor asked, wanting to know more about her brother’s former surroundings.
“It was terrible,” Clark said.
The two smiled. Clark looked at the folded flag that Eleanor cradled in her arms.
“This,” he said, patting the flag, “is a treasure.”
Finally, journey’s end
After everyone had gone, Keller’s casket was moved to Section 25, Grave 827.
A Fort Logan crew lowered it into the ground, but not before a worker spotted a laminated tag attached to the coffin.
“His date of death is June 1942,” the man said. “I wasn’t even born yet.”
“Where’d they find him at?” another asked.
“Alaska.”
“Wow, what was he doing there?”
Keller’s marble gravestone was in a nearby vehicle, etched with dates, his rank and a note that he was killed in action.
And just below that, a message his sister never thought she would see:
“Home at last.”
Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.
