On Aug. 16, 1983, Lillie Mynhier Runner took out a single sheet of notebook paper and penned a final letter. Having outlived her husband and four of her six children, three of whom had died before age 24, she was alone in a small white house on the edge of a country road near Salt Lick in Bath County. The ailing nonagenarian’s letter began as a declaration of her solitude and physical sufferings. “My children and Papa is [sic] gone,” she wrote, “I am all alone, and I am sick.”
Her letter continued with Lillie’s memories of January 1944, the waters of the North Atlantic, and her son, a sailor on the U.S.S. St. Augustine. “I am thinking of Charles,” she wrote. She mourned what he went through the night his ship sank, with thoughts of him floating in icy water.
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Late on the evening of Jan. 6, 1944, the St. Augustine led a convoy en route to Cuba. Based in New York Harbor, the vessel was a 272-foot patrol gunboat with a crew of 145 sailors. Armed with 3-inch guns, the St. Augustine often was tasked with escorting tankers from the Northeast to Caribbean ports, a mission that was part of a broader strategy to protect the eastern coastline of the United States during World War II.
The convoy included a Tydol Gas tanker, two Coast Guard cutters, the U.S.S. Argo and the U.S.S Thetis, all led by the St. Augustine. The sea that night was especially onerous. Sailing in blackout conditions, the convoy negotiated 20-foot waves and 40-mile-per-hour winds. The air was a wintry 33 degrees and the water temperature just 38.
At approximately 10:20 p.m., 70 miles off the coast of New Jersey, the St. Augustine’s radar located an unidentified vessel sailing seaward from the mouth of Delaware Bay. Leaving the convoy, the St. Augustine desperately tried to communicate with the approaching vessel. It didn’t respond. On came the unidentified ship toward the convoy.
Onboard the St. Augustine, Fireman 1st Class Charles William Runner slept. A 19-year-old Kentuckian assigned to the patrol gunboat since October 1942, Charles was liked by all his shipmates, a friend and fellow sailor later recalled.
According to survivors, Charles was on duty the evening of Jan. 6 and, afterward, went below deck and turned in for the night. While he and much of the ship’s crew were asleep, a voice burst through the loudspeaker instructing the sailors with the haunting words: “Stand by for collision!”
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Charles was born to Bee and Lillie Runner in Bath County on Sept. 9, 1924. The Runner family was poor and lived in a whitewashed house at the end of a dirt road. Bee, whom the children called Papa, was a farmer who raised a few cows, pigs and chickens. High above the house was a steep ridge that was rutted by cow paths. On top of the ridge, Bee and his family raised tobacco in a small rock-littered field, and they grew corn in the valley below.
Lillie and Bee raised six children—Vivian, Johnny, Joe, Charles, Geraldine and Tim, and a grandchild, Bud, who came to live with them after his mother, Vivian, died in 1937.
Growing up, Charles enjoyed the trappings of a rural childhood. Hunting, fishing and pitching in with chores on the farm, he was seemingly always on the go and possessed a passion for service. In 1941, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that employed young men during the Great Depression. Then came Pearl Harbor, and in late December 1941, Joe left for the Army. A minor at the time, Charles could only watch and wait until his 18th birthday.
In August 1942, Bee signed for Charles a few weeks before his birthday. Charles enlisted as an apprentice seaman in the Naval Reserve and immediately left for basic training at Great Lakes Naval Base in Waukegan, Illinois. After five weeks of basic training, he received orders to report to the U.S.S. St. Augustine.
During this time, life was hard for the Runner family back in Salt Lick. Bee and Lillie provided for their family with earnings from meager tobacco and corn crops, occasionally selling a cow and butchering a pig. Lillie sold cream from a dairy cow, and Bee took work where he could, often at Kautz, a local dairy farm. It was not enough, and by mid-1943, Bee left Salt Lick for work in Detroit.
Joe and Charles soon sent home a portion of their pay, generously proposing that Lillie use the money as needed. Lillie wanted new living room furniture, and both sons were more than willing to buy it for their mother. Geraldine, just 15 years old in 1943, wanted a locket and a pair of white majorette boots. Charles graciously purchased a locket and, while docked in New York, he searched unsuccessfully for the boots at Staten Island stores, eventually sending money home. Geraldine purchased the boots, loved both gifts, and often doted on Charles.
In early 1943, Charles began writing Betty Highley, a friend of Geraldine’s. Their letters grew more frequent, and soon, they were engaged. While Charles was on furlough in July, the two posed for several photographs. Faded black-and-white pictures show a happy couple in the yard of the Runner home, in the shadows of Carrington Rock, and swimming in the shallow waters of the Licking River.
That year, Charles was promoted to seaman 1st class followed by a promotion to fireman 1st class that became official on Jan. 1, 1944. With each letter, his optimism remained steadfast, and he implored his mother not to worry about him. “I’ll be fine,” he wrote, and closed each letter with salutations such as, “Keep your chin up!” and “From your sailor on the seas!”
At the beginning of 1944, all would change.
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Just before midnight on Jan. 6, 1944, near Cape May, New Jersey, the St. Augustine sped toward the Camas Meadows, a massive tanker. The commands of neither ship knew the identity of the other and, with German U-boats known to patrol the East Coast of the U.S., suspicion greatly influenced their actions. The St. Augustine, compelled by a mission to protect the convoy, attempted to stop what appeared a legitimate threat by flashing lights and desperately trying to communicate with the unknown vessel. Yet, on came the tanker.
According to lookouts on the Camas Meadows, when the St. Augustine was about 200 yards away, she appeared to swing slightly to starboard and then turned hard to port on a heading across the bow of the Camas Meadows. A report from the Naval Armed Guard attached to the Camas Meadows details what happened next. The bow of the Camas Meadows struck the patrol craft amidships near her funnel and penetrated to a depth of about three-fourths of her beam, almost cutting the craft in half.
As the Camas Meadows reversed engines and pulled away, sailors aboard the St. Augustine scrambled upward from the ship’s interior and were greeted on the deck by icy winds and the spray of waves striking the wounded ship. Then, they heard the captain’s voice. What he said undoubtedly shook the men who, moments before, had been asleep in their warm bunks. According to a survivor, the captain called out, “Boys, she’s going down. Get over the side as quick as you can. May God bless you.”
Near midnight, Charles Runner and more than 100 of his fellow St. Augustine sailors leapt from the wounded ship into the North Atlantic waters.
Witnesses aboard the Argo watched from afar as the St. Augustine’s bow rose up, then slipped backward. The ship sank in just five minutes.
In the chaos that ensued after the collision, only two rafts were freed before the ship went down. Robert Lee, a friend of Charles’, soon found one of them. When he later encountered the second raft, he learned that Charles was not on it, “but how I wish he was,” Lee later wrote.
The Argo and the Thetis soon arrived and began to rescue survivors. Other ships also were dispatched to assist. The rescue was greatly challenged by winds and large waves that pushed survivors about. Charles was among them, floating helplessly in the icy waters.
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On Jan. 10, a message from the Bureau of Naval Personnel arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bee Runner of Star Route in Salt Lick. Written in bold print, the letter began, “The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you of the death of your son, Charles William Runner… as a result of collision at sea while in performance of his duty and in the service of his country.”
In the days after Charles’ death, a flurry of Western Union telegrams arrived at the Runner home. One such message, sent from the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, confirmed that Charles’ remains would leave Philadelphia by train and arrive in Salt Lick on the C. & O. Railway on Jan. 17, just 11 days after the St. Augustine sank and a year and five months after Charles enlisted.
After the funeral, Charles was buried in the Jones Cemetery, less than a mile from the family home. In a photo, a devastated Lillie stood next to her son’s still-fresh grave, a large American flag nearby.
Among the letters of condolences that arrived at the Runner home was one from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who offered his sympathies. Letters from the offices of Congressman Joe B. Bates and Sen. A.B. “Happy” Chandler, both of the Kentucky delegation, extended their sympathy and gentle reminders of Charles’ tremendous sacrifice for the nation, as did a signed letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which noted that Charles now “stands on the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die that freedom may live.”
World War II ended the following year. Joe came home in November 1945. Time went on. And yet, Charles’ family never got over the untimely death of their beloved brother and son.
Lillie Runner went on to survive Bee and all but two sons, Johnny and Joe. Nearing death in 1983, she wrote of her life and the loss of her children and specifically of Charles. Nearly 40 years later, the immeasurable pain she still felt was evident in the closing sentence of that letter: “It breaks my heart when I think of it, recalling how Charles died without family nearby.”
Lillie passed away 12 days after writing the letter.
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The last two letters Lillie mailed to Charles were postmarked Jan. 7, 1944. They were stamped “Unclaimed,” a large red X made through the St. Augustine’s Fleet Post Office New York address. Those letters were returned to the Salt Lick address. Today, 80 years later, neither letter has been opened.