Kenneth Seeley
Personal
Gender: Male
Date of Death: February 27, 1980
Death Place: Sierra Vista, AZ
Kenneth Seeley
Area soldier’s body to be returned home
Dansville – The body of Sgt. Kenneth Seeley will be returned to Dansville, his home town, for a funeral mass and burial, a spokesman for the family said yesterday.
The 26-year-old instructor in the Army’s intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., was killed Wednesday when the plane in which he was a passenger on a routine training mission crashed.
Date of the funeral has not been set.
According to officers in the Fort Huachuca public information office, an investigation board from Fort Rucker, Ala., visited the crash site at Sierra Vista, Ariz., about 12 miles from the base, and found the wreckage so scattered that it does not expect to determine the cause of the accident for at least two or three weeks. “It may take as much as two to three months,” the Army’s spokesmen said.
Seeley worked in Dansville for a firm of tree surgeons for two years after graduating from Dansville Central School in 1971. He married Rachel Ann Herrick of Dansville in 1973 and was transferred to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., by his employer, working there until he joined the Army in 1975.
He lived on the Arizona post with his wife and their two daughters, Laura Ann, 3, and Elizabeth Rachel, 6 months.
He had been named the post’s “soldier of the month” for March and Army spokesmen said the honor would be recognized posthumously.
Chambers of Commerce in the nearby communities of Huachuca City and Sierra Vista will hold their monthly meetings honoring the soldier of the month, spokesmen said, and various trophies and financial awards are to be accepted either by Seeley’s unit commander or his wife.
Published in the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York) Saturday March 1, 1980
