thedrifter
08-27-08, 08:35 AM
Federal Building to be re-named for World War II hero
By Paul Gottlieb Peninsula Daily News
PORT ANGELES — The Federal Building in Port Angeles represents the country for which Marine Pvt. 1st Class Richard Anderson was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for heroism in World War II.
Now the 12,400-square-foot edifice is days away from being named after the Sequim High School graduate who died on a Pacific island in 1944 after he tucked a grenade to his stomach to save his comrades.
The brick government building at 138 W. First St. in Port Angeles will be renamed the Richard B. Anderson Federal Building at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Scheduled speakers at the hour-long dedication at the building will be Port Angeles Mayor Gary Braun and the North Olympic Peninsula's congressman, Norm Dicks.
Master of ceremonies will be Robin Graf, the federal General Service Administration's assistant regional administrator for public building service.
City Hall spokeswoman Teresa Pierce will sing the national anthem.
Legislation
Earlier this year, Dicks, D-Belfair, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Freeland, sponsored legislation in the House and Senate to rename the building after Anderson.
President Bush signed the legislation into law July 15.
Anderson was born in Tacoma in 1921 and was raised in Agnew, where he attended Macleay School before graduating from Sequim High School.
He was living in Port Angeles when he enlisted in the Marines, becoming a mortarman and ending up in the Marshall Islands in the North Pacific.
His first day of combat on Feb. 1, 1944, was on the island of Roi-Namur on the Kwajalein Atoll, 2,100 miles southwest of Hawaii, in an area now part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
That day, with three other Marines in a shell crater with him, Anderson "hurled his body" on a grenade, according to Anderson's medal citation, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.
"Anderson was preparing to throw a grenade at an enemy position when it slipped from his hands and rolled toward the men at the bottom of the hole," the citation said.
Ellie
By Paul Gottlieb Peninsula Daily News
PORT ANGELES — The Federal Building in Port Angeles represents the country for which Marine Pvt. 1st Class Richard Anderson was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for heroism in World War II.
Now the 12,400-square-foot edifice is days away from being named after the Sequim High School graduate who died on a Pacific island in 1944 after he tucked a grenade to his stomach to save his comrades.
The brick government building at 138 W. First St. in Port Angeles will be renamed the Richard B. Anderson Federal Building at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Scheduled speakers at the hour-long dedication at the building will be Port Angeles Mayor Gary Braun and the North Olympic Peninsula's congressman, Norm Dicks.
Master of ceremonies will be Robin Graf, the federal General Service Administration's assistant regional administrator for public building service.
City Hall spokeswoman Teresa Pierce will sing the national anthem.
Legislation
Earlier this year, Dicks, D-Belfair, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Freeland, sponsored legislation in the House and Senate to rename the building after Anderson.
President Bush signed the legislation into law July 15.
Anderson was born in Tacoma in 1921 and was raised in Agnew, where he attended Macleay School before graduating from Sequim High School.
He was living in Port Angeles when he enlisted in the Marines, becoming a mortarman and ending up in the Marshall Islands in the North Pacific.
His first day of combat on Feb. 1, 1944, was on the island of Roi-Namur on the Kwajalein Atoll, 2,100 miles southwest of Hawaii, in an area now part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
That day, with three other Marines in a shell crater with him, Anderson "hurled his body" on a grenade, according to Anderson's medal citation, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.
"Anderson was preparing to throw a grenade at an enemy position when it slipped from his hands and rolled toward the men at the bottom of the hole," the citation said.
Ellie