Navy Ensign Lewis S. Stockdale’s mother in 1943 christened a destroyer escort ship named for her son, a casualty on the USS Oklahoma from the Pearl Harbor attack two years before.

The honor provided a measure of solace to the family, but it would take nearly 75 years from the time of his death to the moment of burial with full military honors for the 27-year-old Montana native, who was previously interred as an “unknown” at Punchbowl cemetery.

The USS Oklahoma officer received that funeral Friday at Punchbowl. A grave marker with his name now rests above Stockdale’s identified partial remains.

Trudy Ritz, Stockdale’s 71-year-old niece, said it’s “wonderful for the closure to know that there is a grave site here in Punchbowl.”

Ritz and her husband, Pat, came in from Oregon for the ceremony. Her brother, Stephen Gentry, and his son, also named Stephen, were there as well.

“It’s extremely important to the remaining family because we saw my uncle’s (mother and father) — they were our grandparents — we saw the silence and the emotion and the tears their entire lives knowing that they’d lost their only son in Pearl Harbor.”

Six sailors in summer white uniforms carried Stockdale’s American flag-draped casket to a reception area, where Rear Adm. John Fuller, head of Navy Region Hawaii and Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific, presented the flag to Ritz.

“On behalf of the president of the United States, the United States Navy and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service,” Fuller told Ritz in the language that’s used at military funerals.

Pat Ritz said the Navy named 16 ships during the war after officers who were killed Dec. 7, 1941, on the Oklahoma.

The Pentagon announced last year that it was taking the unprecedented step of exhuming all the Oklahoma unknowns at Punchbowl. The crew was buried in heavily commingled graves.

Research conducted by Ray Emory, a Pearl Harbor veteran who manned a .50-caliber machine gun on the USS Honolulu on Dec. 7, 1941, led to one USS Oklahoma casket being unearthed in 2003.

Using military records, Emory had determined the identities of 27 men. The Pentagon positively identified five men. But incomplete sets of bones of more than 100 other men also were found, complicating further identifications until all the remains were recovered.

The last of the remaining 388 sailors and Marines were disinterred in November, and identifications continue to be made. Some families have decided to rebury service members at Punchbowl — with individual grave markers.

“Sailors and service members alike have the opportunity to come to this place and to learn about him (Stockdale),” chaplain Lt. Daniel Clark told those assembled. “Hundreds of thousands of other visitors from around the globe (will) come and learn about his sacrifice.”

Brig Gen. Mark Spindler, deputy director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which is identifying the Oklahoma unknowns, was at the burial along with two scientists who worked on the Stockdale identification.

“It’s the full accounting which is returning the name of that great warrior,” Spindler said. “No longer does he have to lay under a stone that says ‘unknown.’ His name was Lewis Stockdale, and he was an officer in the United States Navy. That’s what’s important, and so it brings full closure not only for the family, but I’ve got to tell you, it brings full closure for us.”