They met on Miami beach while war raged in Europe. James “Jim” Kannette, a jazz pianist, saw Eunice Brierley, a nurse, knitting. He asked her what she was doing, and she explained she was knitting socks.
Jim was from Greece, and Eunice was from England. They both had come to the United States in search of a better life. They fell in love, but World War II pulled them apart. The couple now rest together at Arlington National Cemetery.
When the United States entered the war on Dec. 7, 1941, Jim and Eunice volunteered for the U.S. Army and trained together at Camp Jackson, South Carolina. As they completed their training in the summer of 1942, Jim proposed to Eunice. They wed the night before they both shipped out to different battle fronts, not seeing each other again for three years.
Jim became a staff sergeant on a B-25 bomber for the Fifth Air Force in the Southwest Pacific Theater and flew dangerous missions in New Guinea. On one mission, according to his older daughter, Karyl Ray, his bomber crashed during a storm. The crew had to live in the wrecked aircraft until a local priest retrieved them and brought them to friendly forces.
After the crash, Jim and his crewmen were flown back to the United States for treatment, but he was eventually returned to New Guinea and flew more missions. On March 4, 1944, he was wounded again when his B-25 crashed shortly after takeoff. A few months later, he was returned to the United States for the remainder of the war.
Eunice became a second lieutenant and shipped out for the Mediterranean Theater with the 33rd General Hospital. The hospital staff first landed in Casablanca, Morocco, on July 15, 1943. Two months later, the hospital moved to Tunisia, where she treated the wounded from the Sicily and Italy campaigns. Working in the field was difficult, especially during sandstorms. “She said everything was dirty all the time,” her younger daughter Jamie Hurley explained.
After Rome fell to the Americans, the Army moved Eunice’s hospital north of the city, where she treated patients until the end of the war in 1945. A highlight of her service in Italy was attending Mass at the Vatican and meeting Pope Pius XII.
Jim and Eunice reunited after the war and settled in New York City, where he returned to playing the piano, and they had two daughters. They eventually returned to Miami, where Jim played at the famous Fontainebleau Hotel and Eunice worked part-time for the Surfside Beach Recreational Department. “They were very devoted to each other,” Ray said. “My father always wore socks my mother knitted with his initials on them.”
When Jim passed away at age 62 Eunice never remarried. She moved in with Ray and her husband and lived to 100. When she passed away, Ray and Hurley decided to have their parents laid to rest together at Arlington National Cemetery. “Their military experience was really important to them,” Hurley said, “and they were very proud of their time serving in the war.”
Both sisters wanted to attend their parents’ inurnment, but they could not make the trip. Instead, they entrusted Cemetery Representative Anthony Payne to ensure their parents were laid to rest with honor.
On a sunny Aug. 6, 2026, two cemetery team members, Payne and Tyrique Lauderdale, with Interment Services, met in section 73 to lay the Kannettes to rest. Payne carried both Jim and Eunice’s urns to an open niche in Section 73. “I assured them that under my watch their parents would be taken care of and handled in a very dignified manner,” he said.
Once Payne placed the two urns together in the niche, he paused for a moment of silence. Lauderdale read aloud the identifying card on the niche cover. Payne concurred and Lauderdale sealed the cover. The Kannettes, who proudly served their country in a war that separated them for three years, were now together for eternity.
