FIEDLER, Craig Eugene 1953 - 1980

FIEDLER, HIATT, INMAN, GEE

Posted By: Joey Stark
Date: 3/27/2022 at 21:31:15

"The Fairfield Ledger"
Monday, March 31, 1980
Front Page, Column 4

Local Navyman dies in Korea

FTG2 Craig FIEDLER, 26, Fairfield Navyman, died of injuries suffered in a fall in Korea, according to word received by his mother and stepfather, Mr. and Mrs. Bob HIATT, Route 4.

FIEDLER was stationed aboard the U.S. Blue Ridge. The Navy gave no details of the accident, which occurred in the Seoul, Korea, harbor. A message reporting his death was received here Saturday night.

(Note: The Rank of FTG2 is FIRE CONTROL TECHNICIAN (MISSILE GUIDANCE SYSTEMS PETTY OFFICER 2ND CLASS)

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"The Fairfield Ledger"
Tuesday, April 1, 1980
Front Page, Columns 5 and 6

Navy orders probe in Craig FIEDLER's death

FTG2 Craig E. FIEDLER, Fairfield, died Sunday in Korea after he fell approximately 20 feet from a pier to rocks exposed by low tide, according to U.S. Navy authorities.

The Navy today told his mother and stepfather, Mr. and Mrs. Bob HIATT, Fairfield Route 3, that a full-scale investigation of the incident had been ordered.

FIEDLER, 26, suffered multiple skull fractures in a fall from the pier leading to his ship, the U.S.S. Blue Ridge. He was flown by helicopter to the U.S. Army 121st Field Hospital at Seoul, Korea, where he underwent brain surgery Saturday night. He died a few hours later in the hospital.

Mrs. HIATT first learned of her son's death in a call from another son, Airman Scott FIEDLER, from his base in Alabama. She was officially informed by Navy personnel Monday at 11 a.m. The body will be returned to Fairfield for services. Arrangements will be in charge of the Raymond Funeral Home.

FIEDLER was born April 30, 1953 in Ottumwa, the son of Edwin D. FIEDLER and Alice Jean FIEDLER HIATT. He graduated from Fairfield High School in 1971 and attended Parsons College and Ottumwa Heights College before enlisting in the Navy in 1974.

Following his training at Great Lakes, he was assigned to the U.S.S. Blue Ridge, based first at San Diego, Calif., and later at Yokosuka, Japan. He was scheduled to complete his tour of duty in November.

FIEDLER was a member of St. Mary Catholic Church. In addition to his mother and stepfather, he is survived by three brothers: Edwin K. FIEDLER, Buffalo, N.Y,.; Randall A. FIEDLER, Fairfield; and Scott L. FIEDLER, Maxwell AFB, Ala.

Also surviving are a stepsister, Connie INMAN, Stanwood; two stepbrothers, William HIATT, Quincy, Mass., and Roger HIATT, Fairfield; a grandmother, Clara GEE, Fairfield Route 4; and a grandfather, Oliver FIEDLER, Ottumwa. His father preceded him in death.

(Note: The photo at the bottom of this posting ran with the above article.)

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"The Fairfield (Ia.) Ledger"
Tuesday, April 8, 1980
Page 12, Columns 1 and 2

Craig FIEDLER rites scheduled on Thursday

Funeral services for FTG2 Craig E. FIEDLER, Fairfield navyman, will be held Thursday at 10 a.m. at St. Mary's Catholic Church.

FIEDLER, 26, died March 30 following surgery at an Army hospital in Seoul, Korea. He suffered severe injuries a few hours earlier when he fell from a pier leading to his ship, the U.S.S. Blue Ridge.

Naval authorities informed his mother and stepfather, Mr. and Mrs. Bob HIATT, Fairfield Route 3, that a full-scale investigation of the accident had been ordered.

Services will be conducted by the Rev. William Sullivan, assisted by the Rev. Karl Holtkamp, Brooklyn; and the Rev. Francis Henricksen, Davenport, both former local pastors. Burial will be in Evergreen Cemetery.

FIEDLER's body was flown from Seoul to Travis Air Force Base, Calif. It was scheduled to arrive in Des Moines tonight, accompanied by a Naval escort.

The family will receive friends Wednesday from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Raymond Funeral Home. Prayers for a Christian wake will be recited a the funeral home beginning at 8:15 p.m.

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"The Fairfield Ledger"
Tuesday, April 15, 1980
Front Page, Columns 1 - 6

Strange circumstances in Navyman's death
By Larry Johnson

Craig FIEDLER was so determined to join the U.S. Navy that he was willing to lose 145 pounds to prove it.

Craig was always heavyset, his mother says. A motorcycle accident between his junior and senior years at Fairfield High School left him bedridden, much heavier due to his inactivity, and still gaining weight. Eventually, he weighed 355 pounds.

But his father, Ed, had been an Air Force man. He thought the service was one of the best things he'd ever done. He often told his four boys that he'd like it if they enlisted, too.

When Ed FIEDLER died in 1972, Craig made up his mind that he'd honor his father's wish. But the Navy said Craig would have to cut his weight to 210. He dieted, and he made it, and the Navy let him in.

He weight just 170 March 31 when a mysterious fall took his life in the Korean harbor of Inchon.

FIEDLER's mother and stepfather, Jean and Bob HIATT, are dissatisfied with Navy explanations concerning the death of their son. They suspect his death was not an accident.

"They'll never convince me this was an accident," says Jean HIATT. "Craig knew how to handle himself. If he fell, I think somebody had to shove him."

Jean HIATT's hypothesis is not based entirely on speculation. Although she's not certain of every detail, something went sour for Craig in the Navy.

For five years of his six-year hitch, Craig had considered making the Navy a career.

"He loved the Navy, until the last time he was home, last summer," says Bob HIATT, who'd known Craig since the boy was a child and tagged along on fishing trips with HIATT and Ed FIEDLER.

Craig's last letters home were full of complaints about the Navy, which wanted to transfer him from his ship, the U.S.S. Blue Ridge, to a smaller ship, the U.S.S. Hammond.

"He had problems on the ship, but he also had friends there, too, and he didn't want to leave them," says Jean HIATT. "He told me that at this late date, there was no good reason to go to the other ship."

"Wel, 291 days to go . . .," he wrote the HIATTs in late November. "It looks like the Navy is trying to screw me over before I get out. I am probably going to be transferred to the U.S.S. Hammond. Why can't they just leave me along?" (sic)

Eventually, with the help of an officer, he beat the transfer. He was due to get out of the service in November, perhaps 90 days sooner if he enrolled in a college. He planned, he wrote his parents, to try to get acceptance for the fall semester at Ottumwa Heights.

But sometime in early March--Jean and Bob HIATT won't be certain of the date until they get their phone bill--Craig called his mother in the middle of the night.

The telephone call shocked Jean HIATT, because, while his letters alluded somewhat ambiguously to certain problems he had in the Navy, the telephone call was more explicit. Mrs. HIATT now thinks that her son was afraid his mail was being opened.

"He was crying," she says of the call. "I knew he was really upset, because he hadn't done that since he was a little boy. I can't remember everything he said, but he told me he wanted to come home and said he had enough money to do that."

He wanted a 30-day leave, he told his mother, because an American officer with whom he had contact was dealing drugs.

"The officer wanted Craig to hide the stuff in the missile house," his mother says. Craig cussed him out, because he didn't want to get busted and lose a stripe. I don't know what all was taking place, and I'm sorry now that I didn't ask him any names."

Then, Craig said something that haunts his mother now.

"He said 'Mom, don't get shook. But if you get a letter or a telegram saying I'm sick or injured, don't believe it for a minute. Give it to (State Sen.) Frosty Schwengels, because he'll know what to do. But don't leave it to the Navy.'"

"He was fearing for his life," Jean HIATT says. "He was afraid there was a contract out on his life. He said it would be very easy for someone to have him killed in a foreign country."

The fear that he might be murdered while on shore leave led him to change his appearance each time he left the U.S.S. Blue Ridge, he told his mother.

"He told me that he always wrote down and kept track of how he looked when he left ship," his mother says. "He never wore the same clothes, and one time he would wear a beard, then a mustache, and then be clean shaven to disguise himself."

Then, just before midnight on March 29, FIEDLER was severely injured. Bob and Jean HIATT received three separate, varying accounts of the death from Navy spokesmen. One said Craig fell 20 feet from a pier onto rocks exposed by low tide. One said the fall was from a dock at extremely high tide. The third said Craig fell from a gangplank.

A letter received by the HIATTs from Navy Capt. Dudley L. Carlson, the navyman's commanding officer, told them Craig fell from a pier at low tide.

"The tide, which is significant, chages 20 feet, was out so the rocks next to the pier were exposed. The pier railing is thigh height and somehow Craig backed up or stumbled against the handrail on the pier and fell backwards sixteen feet onto the rocks below," Carlson wrote.

To the HIATTs, the key word in Carlson's account is 'somehow.'

"I feel his (Carlson's) letter is sincere," Jean HIATT says, "but he wasn't there. And the word 'somehow' bothers me. If I hadn't gotten that telephone call from Craig, I probably would have accepted what they told me."

According to Carlson and other Navy spokesmen who contacted the HIATTs, FIEDLER had been on five-hour liberty. He had gone into Inchon, Carlson wrote, "partying" with his shipmates. The HIATTs say they doubt Craig fell because he had too much to drink.

"I know him well enough to know that he could handle his liquor," says Bob HIATT. "He never drank more than he could handle, as far as I know. He could go into Fairfield at 5 at night with his friends and come back home and sit at this table at 1 in the morning and you couldn't tell a thing."

After an examiniation by the ship's doctor, Carlson wrote, Craig was flown the 40 miles from Inchon to Seoul, where a neurosurgeon operated to relieve the pressure of internal bleeding.

After the operation, FIEDLER was taken to the Army hospital's intensive care unit, where he died shortly after midnight March 30. He never regained consciousness.

The HIATTs were not informed of the injury until 12 hours after Craig's fall. Official confirmation of death, they say, did not come from the Navy until their son had been dead for over 24 hours. Unoffical word of Craig's death was first received by Craig's brother, Scott, serving in the Air Force at a base in Alabama, as he tried to arrange authorization to fly to Korea to be with his brother.

"An officer told Scott there was no need for authorization, that Craig had been dead for three hours," Jean HIATT says.

Although the HIATTs are disturbed by the delay in notification, they are more upset by the delay in getting Craig's body back to the United States.

"The told us specifically three separate times that it would be here within three days. It took 10," says Bob HIATT.

As Craig asked in his haunting phone call, the family told Frosty Schwengels about the strange circumstances of Craig's death.

Schwengels, in turn, discussed the case with First District Congressman Jim Leach, who met with the HIATTs April 7 at their home north of Fairfield.

Leach sent a letter to the Dept. of the Navy last Thursday, the day of Craig's funeral here. Leach had gotten no response to the query late yesterday. The Navy, however, has ordered an investigation of the death.

"We may never find out what happened," says Jean HIATT, "but if it (an investigation) saves one other boy, it's going to be worth it.

"I'll tell you what Craig was--he was everybody's friend, that's what he was."

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*Transcribed for genealogy purposes; I have no relation to the person(s) mentioned.

Note: Buried in Lot 5th.091.

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