Yesterday, the DPAA announced that PFC Frank Leroy Athon, Jr., of Cincinnati, Ohio has been accounted for as of 27 July 2020. Read their press release here.
Frank (who was also “Frankie” or “Bud” to his family) was born in Cincinnati on 12 June 1914. He was the first child born to Frank and Ida Cheevers Athon, though he was not the oldest child in the family: Ida had three daughters from a previous marriage. The Athon family eventually grew to include six children – Helen, Katherine, Mary, Frankie, Joseph Patrick, and Everett – and made their home in the working-class West End neighborhood, suppored by Frank Senior’s job as a truck driver.
Like many children of his generation, “Bud” Athon’s education ended after grammar school. After finishing eighth grade, around the age of fourteen or fifteen, he presumably traded his school books for a job. He may have gone to work in one of the slaughterhouses that gave the “Queen City” a less glamorous nickname: “Porkopolis.” Little is known about his life between 1930 and 1940, but by the end of the decade he was married to Marcella Ballard and head of his own household – conveniently located a few doors down from his parents, and just a short walk to his tannery job with the Butcher’s Hide Association.
Bud enlisted in the Marine Corps in Cincinnati on 27 October 1942, at the age of twenty-eight. He was sent to Parris Island for recruit training, and from there joined the 5th Replacement Draft, a unit of new Marines headed for the Pacific. In April of 1943, Private Athon arrived in New Zealand and was assigned to duty with Company A, First Battalion, 6th Marines. He would spend the rest of the spring and summer training alongside Guadalcanal veterans and a handful of other replacements – and did well, for he was promoted to the rank of Private First Class.
PFC Athon’s first and last combat experience came that November, in the hell of Operation GALVANIC – the invasion of Betio in the Tarawa atoll. His company led a flanking assault against Japanese defenses which for two days had stopped two regiments of Marines on a narrow beachhead. That evening, the tired men of 1/6 halted and attempted to coalesce into a defensive position against the inevitable infiltrators. Athon’s Able Company found it had advanced too far and had to realign itself by the light of burning Japanese trucks. Unfortunately, this left a gap was left between their flank and their sister Baker Company, and several small groups of Japanese fighters managed to get into the Marine lines, battling at close quarters with rifles, grenades, and bayonets. It is likely, although not certain, that Frank Athon lost his life during this nighttime battle. He was reported killed in action on 22 November 1943, by shrapnel wounds in his chest and head.
The next day, Frank Athon was buried in a long trench grave alongside some thirty other Marines, almost all of them from his battalion. The site – known as “Row D, East Division Cemetery” – was later lost, and the men buried there declared non-recoverable.
News of Bud’s death reached his wife and parents just days before Christmas. Their sadness was soon compounded by the loss of Frank Athon Senior in March of 1944. In the years that followed, Ida and her children would publish memorials in the Cincinnati Enquirer on Bud’s birthday and the anniversary of his death. These memorials included little poems which gave a glimpse into the family’s great loss:
Your gentle face and patient smile,
With sadness we recall
You had a kindly word for each
And died beloved by all.
The voice is mute and stilled the heart
That loved us well and true,
Oh, bitter was the trial to part
From one so good as you.
You are not forgotten, Bud,
Nor will you ever be,
As long as life and memory last
We will remember thee
We miss you now, our hearts are sore
As time goes by we miss you more
Your loving smile, your gentle face,
No one can fill your vacant place.
Frank Athon was finally accounted for on 27 July 2020, when the DPAA announced his recovery. His remains were found by non-profit organization History Flight in 2019, in “Row D” of Cemetery 33 – right where they were buried by his buddies over 75 years ago.
Welcome home, PFC Athon. Semper Fi.
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