Tiverton resident Nick Wolfe never got a chance to meet his grandfather, United States Navy Quartermaster Seaman Ronald Wolfe. And Nick’s mother, Barbara, likewise never got to meet her father — he died, along with all 128 of his fellow crew members, in one of the nation’s greatest military tragedies, when the nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher was lost at sea during trials 200 miles off the coast of Cape Cod in 1963. The sub’s implosion during deep sea tests remains the worst submarine disaster in United States Naval history.

When Quartermaster Wolfe died, his wife, Patricia, was 10 weeks pregnant with their daughter Barbara.  Now, 62 years after the submarine was lost with all hands, Nick hopes to reunite his family in the only way he can — by having the ashes of his mother and grandmother interred in the submarine’s wreck, which still lies on the bottom.

This is not the first time remains of a family member have been interred at the wreck site. Irene Harvey, wife of Lt. Commander John Harvey, the submarine’s captain, were interred there some years ago, and a crew member who was not present on the ship’s final voyage also had his ashes interred at the wreckage site in 2016.

“[Harvey’s] final wishes were to be deposited there, and that's where we got the idea,” Wolfe said.

Quartermaster Wolfe was only 20 years old when he died in the disaster, and his death affected the family for decades — “He had only just found out that she was pregnant,” his grandson said. “A couple of weeks later, he was gone.”

His pregnant bride learned about her husband's death on television.

Nick, who once dreamed of being a submariner himself but was turned down for medical reasons, has instead dedicated his time keeping the memory of the USS Thresher victims alive. And his daughter currently wears 59 as her number in youth sports, a tribute to the USS Thresher’s number, SSN-593. Nick also wore the number during his youth playing career.

Patricia died in 2021 at 80 years of age, and was followed by her daughter, 60, last year. Nick recently gathered portions of his grandmother's and mother’s ashes, as well as a dog tag that belonged to his grandfather, and will bring them to the naval base in Groton, CT. He said officials will notify him if and when they can be interred at the wreck site.

“It’s a huge deal, because they were never together as a family,” he said.

An amazing coincidence

In a coincidence that Nick described as one in a million, another Pocasset Elementary School family has ties to a USS Thresher victim.

Nick said he was picking up his son from school recently and was wearing a USS Thresher tribute hat when a man came up to him and inquired about it. He told him his grandfather, Joseph Hoague, also passed away in the disaster.

Like Quartermaster Wolfe, Hoague was not from Tiverton, but he said he could not believe that two families affected by this disaster ended up in the same small town two generations later.