Shawnee — About 350 mourners attended a weekend memorial service for a Navy sailor killed during the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon.
Ronald John Hemenway, 37, made the move from Shawnee to Washington, D.C., about two years ago. He was seeking to replace long stretches at sea with more time with his wife and baby at what he thought was one of the safest places in the world, a minister recalled Saturday.
But he became one of 189 people killed at the Pentagon. For months after the attacks, his name languished on a list of missing. Later he was officially declared dead.
Mourners filled Hope Lutheran Church in Shawnee, where they said goodbye to the man who had grown up in Alaska and raised horses in Georgia before moving to Johnson County to be close to family who had relocated there.
Hemenway joined the Navy in 1994, graduating top in his class from electronics school. He was picked to serve on the USS LaSalle, where he trained other sailors in electronics. He married in March 1997, and the couple had two children.
Family members remembered Hemenway in written notes that were read at the funeral.
"My words can't say how special he was, how much I wish he was in my arms today," his wife, Marinella Hemenway, wrote.
His father, Bob, recalled a 1 1/2-hour conversation he had with his son the day before the terrorist attacks.
"I am so glad in my heart to have talked to him before that terrible day," Bob Hemenway wrote. "I will cherish every bit of that call as if it's the most precious gemstone in the world."
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