Stewart R. Graham, Coast Guard Officer
Cmdr. Stewart R. Graham, a helicopter pioneer who served in the Coast Guard for 26 years, died at home in Naples, Me., on Aug. 13. He had been ill for a month and was 98 years old. Cmdr. Graham was stationed in Montauk in the late 1930s, and he helped rescue efforts when the Hurricane of 1938 hit.
Born on Sept. 25, 1917, in Brooklyn to the former Edith Stewart and William Moutrie Graham, he came from a military family and had lived throughout the country, including Alaska, when he was growing up. He graduated from high school in Brooklyn and then signed up with the Coast Guard, becoming an aviator. Later, he learned to fly and repair helicopters, as well as the development of the hydraulic lift, according to his niece, Dawn Rana Brophy of Amagansett.
He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and two air medals during his service and was inducted into both the Coast Guard and Navy Halls of Honor. Because of his renown, he and his wife, the former Thomasina Rana, were invited to the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh residence. More recently, the Belgian government had invited him to a ceremony in Belgium at which he was to be knighted in recognition of the role he played in the rescue of the passengers who survived a Sabena Airlines DC-4 flight that crashed on a hillside in Gander, Newfoundland, in 1946. He died before being able to receive the honor in person.
Mr. Graham and his wife, who was known as Mae, met while he was stationed at Montauk. She died in 2014 after their long marriage. Her relatives, Peter Rana Jr., Diana Voorhees, and Rose Lester, and their families are his survivors here.
In addition to the Rana relatives and his niece, he is survived by two sons, Ross Graham of Naples and William Peter Graham of Jacksonville, Ore., and by two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
His ashes are to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.