TWIN FALLS, Idaho — Sitting in the high desert, Richfield's LDS Church meetinghouse is far from the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
But the church will do just fine for a very special ceremony on Saturday.
Words will be spoken. Rifles will salute the heavens. Then, in the small cemetery nearby, Medal of Honor winner Oscar Verner Peterson will finally be recognized with a grave marker from the federal government.
It's not clear why it has taken so long for Peterson, who gave his life and was buried at sea in World War II, to be memorialized with a marker. But no one can dispute that the USS Neosho's chief watertender was a hero.
Childhood friends of young Fred and Donald Peterson don't remember them speaking much of their father's sacrifice. The same goes for the boys' mother, Lola.
But they're well aware of the lives Oscar Peterson saved when his ship came under attack on May 7, 1942.
"There were a lot of people alive after that was over that would not have been if not for (Donald's) dad," said Jim Pate of Shoshone.
U.S. Navy records describe the Neosho, a tanker, as a valuable ship in the opening months of World War II.
Fully converted in July 1941, the craft's main mission became transporting aviation fuel from ports along the West Coast to ships at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. That's where the Neosho first saw action; photos from the fateful Dec. 7, 1941, surprise Japanese attack show it navigating the harbor to safer waters as destroyers sink around it.
Though it escaped there relatively unscathed, the Neosho found more trouble just five months later at the Battle of the Coral Sea, where the U.S. fleet first rebuffed an advance by Japanese naval forces. That strategic success came at a steep price, and American casualties included the tanker.
According to Navy records, the Neosho on May 6, 1942, fueled the USS Yorktown and USS Astoria during the battle's opening maneuvers, then sought safety with the USS Sims as escort. Japanese planes found the two ships the next day, however, and thinking them a carrier and its escort, they attacked.
The attack sank the Sims, while the Neosho, pounded by seven direct hits and a suicide dive, was on fire and threatening to split in half. Importantly, one Japanese bomb had also ruptured a steam line.
That's when Chief Watertender Peterson, the head of a small repair crew, found his place in history.
According to accounts from the military and family members, Peterson — his crew out of commission and himself injured — closed his ship's bulkhead stop valves, incurring severe burns in the process.
"When he reached open air, the skin on his hands came off like gloves," recalls the writer of Peterson's biography in "The History of Richfield, Idaho."
Though the Neosho eventually sank, the chief's actions earned time for its crew to evacuate, and the USS Henley rescued the survivors four days later.
In a way, Oscar Peterson followed the ship he sought to save. Succumbing to his injuries six days after the attack, he was buried at sea.
Back in the states, Peterson's widow, Lola, moved herself and her two sons to Richfield to be closer to her sisters. There, she received her husband's Medal of Honor in the mail in late 1942.
On May 15, 1943, she christened a monument of sorts to his memory: the USS Peterson. The destroyer escort would go on to an eventful career, helping dispatch a German U-boat in 1944, assisting with the first successful American recovery of a missile nose cone fired from Jupiter missiles on Cape Canaveral, and starring as a Japanese destroyer, of all things, in the movie "PT-109."
Oscar Peterson received other tributes: A training camp at north Idaho's Farragut Naval Training Center was named after him. But the camp was decommissioned in 1946, the Peterson sold for scrap in 1973 and the only memorial now is the chief's name, etched into Lola Peterson's grave when she died in 1991.
Saturday's 1 p.m. medal presentation is intended to fix that by finally providing a formal grave marker. It will also give the Peterson family more than just a note in a mailbox.
"That was the culture of the day," said Bob Jackson, the District 6 adjutant for the Veterans of Foreign Wars who will read Peterson's medal citation on Saturday. "They didn't have the systems (we do) today to do things right."
Jackson and other VFW members started pursuing a grave marker a couple years ago, when family members asked about getting one. The project grew into what is expected to be a massive event for tiny Richfield. Special guests should include Rear Adm. James Symonds, the first commander of the USS Ronald Reagan who presented Nancy Reagan with the flag from the former president's casket during his 2004 funeral; Idaho's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Gary Sayler; Lt. Gov. Brad Little; and state Reps. Donna Pence and Wendy Jaquet, who both represent Richfield's legislative district. The veterans' group has also invited five other living Medal of Honor recipients, Jackson said, though he's not sure how many might attend.
"We are anticipating quadrupling the population (of Richfield) for the day," Jackson said.
Of course, the ceremony has come too late for most of Oscar Peterson's immediate family.
Only one son, Fred Peterson, is still alive today; he lives in Rupert. Donald Peterson passed away about 18 months ago.
To them, their father was a conundrum: an inspirational hero who they barely knew.
The boys graduated from high school in Richfield, and both Pate and Faye Hubsmith, the latter now of Twin Falls, remember them as regular teenagers who played basketball and swam in the summer.
But Hubsmith also recalls the "quiet" Lola Peterson. And Mary, Fred Peterson's wife, said Oscar Peterson's death was hard on his widow.
"When Oscar died, (Lola) died, basically," Mary Peterson said. "She went into a shell and never came out of it."
Fred Peterson, who was ill and could not be interviewed for this report, doesn't remember his father at all.
"But he's always admired his dad," Mary Peterson said, and he would always dig out his father's paperwork and photos for his own children's school reports.
That respect has actually made it hard for the couple to absorb the scale of Saturday's celebration. They originally wanted a smaller, more personal graveside gathering, Mary Peterson said. And they're also still frustrated that it's taken this long to get a marker. Lola Peterson "tried almost every year" to get one, Mary Peterson said. The VFW materials attribute the delay to "reasons unknown."
"(Lola) used to go up to the cemetery on Memorial Day and just cry," Mary Peterson said.
Oscar Peterson's descendants have served as another sort of memorial. Both Fred and Donald Peterson served in Korea. Grandson Victor Peterson spent 15 years in the Navy before retiring to the Mini-Cassia area, and another descendant, Zachary Peterson, is a corporal with the U.S. Marines.
Pate, a close friend of Donald Peterson, believes he saw a glimpse of Oscar Peterson in his friend, who he still calls "Pete."
"If Pete and his dad were anywhere near the same, well, I can understand where his dad was coming from, because Pete would have done the same thing," Pate said.
Though he may not be able to make it to Saturday's ceremony, Hubsmith said she plans to attend and honor the memory of the Neosho watertender, a Wisconsin native who might as well have become a son of Idaho.
"He truly did quite a thing," Hubsmith said.