On Friday, the Rolling Bay post office was renamed after John ‘Bud’ Hawk, a Medal of Honor and four-time Purple Heart recipient who grew up on the island some 80 years ago.
If you’re not familiar about Hawk’s World War II exploits, you can read about them here. No wonder people see him as a true-life action hero.
For my story and a photo gallery of the renaming ceremony, head over here.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill today that would name the Rolling Bay post office after World War II Medal of Honor awardee John ‘Bud’ Hawk.
Decorated with five of the U.S. Army’s top medals in the battlefields of Europe, the Bainbridge Island native was also celebrated for his years in the classrooms of Kitsap County.
“He was a hero for answering his nation’s call in the late 1940s,” said Rep. Jay Inslee, the bill’s prime sponsor. “And he was a hero for several decades to the students he educated.”
Inslee gathered all members of the Washington House delegation to co-sponsor the bill. See a video of Inslee introducing the bill below.
Hawk, now a Bremerton resident, spent his youth in the north Bainbridge neighborhood served by the small Valley Road post office that may soon bear his name.
“He was a son of Rolling Bay,” Inslee said. “He grew up playing with his sister around the post office we’re about to name in his honor.”
Most islanders know the story of Walt Woodward’s fight against racism and war-time hysteria during and after the World War II eviction of Bainbridge’s Japanese Americans.
But never have they had such an intimate look, in both words and pictures, at Woodward and his wife Milly’s life during those years. “In Defense of Our Neighbors,” a new book by Mary Woodward, Walt and Milly’s daughter, is an up-close portrait of a dynamic and individualistic couple as they navigated the challenges of running the Bainbridge Review while providing a voice and a defense for the hundreds of residents banished from their island homes.
Mary Woodward will read from her photo-rich book at Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way, on Sunday at 3 p.m.
Read Kitsap Sun book reviewer Barbara McMichael’s take on “In
Defense of Our Neighbors” below.
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