Supporting a military exercise known as the West-Pac Cruise of 1961, the twenty-year-old Prafke of Rathdrum, Idaho, near Coeur d’Alene was presented with a commemorative cigarette lighter engraved with the names of both his carrier and the mission and a simple gold-leaf sketch of the mighty vessel steaming in blue water.
Prafke kept the lighter, and when he passed away in 2013, his keepsake of over fifty years passed down to his oldest grandson, Connor Dodge, now a senior at Tahoma High School.
Connor is currently enrolled in the school’s Military History of the United States course that studies the iconic naval battle of the Second World War and the famous aircraft carrier that took its name from that historic encounter.
Aullie Prafke is at rest in Section FA, Row B, Site 151 in Tahoma National Cemetery in Maple Valley.
