Torpedoes hit the USS Oklahoma shortly after Schmitt and sailors celebrated Mass. As water flooded the ship, Schmitt and other sailors were trapped in a compartment with a small porthole. He had the chance to escape, but instead hoisted others to safety through the porthole. Twelve men escaped and lived.<\/p>\n
The battleship capsized in minutes, and Schmitt became the first chaplain killed during World War II. He was among 429 crew members on that ship to die in the attack. The Navy announced in September that Schmitt’s remains had been identified.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy living his faith, he gave his life for his country and his people unselfishly,\u201d Schmitt\u2019s great niece Mary Bouska said.<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
The Rev. Aloysius Schmitt will be interred next to the alter at Loras College\u2019s Christ the King chapel, which was built in 1946 and 1947 in his honor. The resting place was inscribed with \u201cPro deo et patria,\u201d the Loras motto, meaning \u201cFor God and country.\u201d The chapel contains a memorial to Schmitt, including personal belongings recovered from the USS Oklahoma. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in May, Hondo told us that LTJG Aloysius H. Schmitt’s remains had been identified from … LTJG Aloysius H. Schmitt comes home<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-we-remember"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/68360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Aloysius](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Aloysius-Schmitt-257x333.jpg\")
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