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Captain of USS Pueblo buried in San Diego
By SETH HETTENA, Associated Press
Last Updated 5:48 p.m. PST Tuesday, February 3, 2004
SAN DIEGO (AP) - Former Cmdr. Lloyd "Pete" Bucher, the skipper of the USS Pueblo when it was captured in 1968 by North Korea, was buried Tuesday with honors from a military that he felt had abandoned him during 11 months of brutal captivity.Three men who served under Bucher on the Pueblo helped carry his flag-draped casket to a wind-swept gravesite overlooking San Diego Bay at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. Bucher died on Jan. 28 at a nursing facility outside San Diego at age 76.
James Kell, who served under Bucher on the Pueblo, said in his eulogy that Bucher was a sailor's sailor who thought of others first.
"There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for the crew, starting with that fateful day on the 23rd of January, 1968," Kell told the audience at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Poway.
The lightly armed Pueblo was monitoring communist ship movements and intercepting messages in international waters near the North Korean coast when it was attacked by torpedo boats. One sailor was killed and 82 were taken prisoner. Some of them, including Bucher, were wounded.
After 11 months, the crew was released two days before Christmas, some of them crippled or nearly blind because of the brutality and malnourishment they endured.
"He was beaten more than anybody else," Kell said. "We were all beaten, we all were tortured. But he had it double, triple, quadruple what we got."
Bucher remained angry that the country he had risked his life for had not come to the aid of the Pueblo. "Everybody just forgot we were there," he told The Associated Press on the 20th anniversary of the ship's capture.
In his homily, Monsignor Joseph Finnerty said the trials and triumphs that marked Bucher's life paralleled those from the life of Jesus Christ, "who was also betrayed, abandoned, discouraged, spat upon, preyed upon."
Kell read the audience of friends, relatives, former shipmates and active members of the Navy a message from the actor Hal Holbrook, who portrayed Bucher in a 1973 TV film about the seizure of the Pueblo.
"Pete Bucher was a beautiful man, a patriot who loved his wife and his country and the men who served and endured with him have been an inspiration," Holbrook wrote. "I salute him from my heart."