Sailor Killed in Explosion Remembered at Rites : Hero: A Simi Valley man, a firefighter on the Midway, was credited with helping save the lives of others in the June 20 accident near Japan.

A Simi Valley sailor who died from injuries he suffered in an explosion aboard the Navy aircraft carrier Midway was remembered Tuesday as “energetic, quietly determined and always wanting to help people.”

More than 200 friends and family members, including about 13 Naval officers from Point Mugu Naval Air Station, attended a funeral Mass for Robert Shane Kilgore at St. Peter Claver Church in Simi Valley.

Kilgore, 22, died last Wednesday at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Tex., where he had been undergoing treatment for burns he suffered during two explosions June 20 aboard the Midway.

The ship had been practicing maneuvers off the coast of Japan at the time of the accident. Two other sailors died and 15 others were injured in the explosions connected to a supply room fire.

Kilgore, a Navy firefighter, has been credited with helping to save the lives of others in the accident.

“Shane’s actions to save others that day should have been expected,” said David Ellis, principal of Simi Valley High School, who had been asked by Kilgore’s family to deliver his eulogy Tuesday.

“Shane was energetic, quietly determined and always wanting to help others,” said Ellis, who had befriended Kilgore while he was a student at the high school. “We should all learn from Shane the importance of living each day so committed, so full of caring, so gung-ho for life that attempting to save our fellow man would be accomplished without even thinking about it.”

Ellis said the high school and Kilgore’s family were planning to establish a college scholarship fund in Kilgore’s name.

Following the Mass, Kilgore was buried with full military honors at San Fernando Mission Cemetery. During a brief graveside ceremony, an honor guard fired a volley of 21 shots into the air in a tribute to the late sailor.

Jacquelyn Marzola, sitting with her husband, Ron, appeared on the verge of tears when she was handed a flag that had covered her son’s steel-gray coffin. A second flag was given to Kilgore’s father, Harold, who was accompanied by his wife, Susan.

Several of Kilgore’s high school friends, including three young men who had driven from Simi Valley to San Antonio to be with Kilgore during his last few days, stood nearby.

“We grew up together,” said David Sherman, one of the three who made the trip to Texas. “We were very tight. He was always there when you needed him.” Immediately after learning of the accident, Sherman said he, Keith Thomas and Billy Fleming, all longtime Kilgore friends, decided to drive to San Antonio.

Sherman said although Kilgore was unable to speak from his hospital bed, he recognized his friends. “He responded by shaking his foot or moving his eyebrows,” Sherman said, adding that at one point Kilgore “looked right at me and smiled.”

Kilgore’s ambition was to become a Ventura County firefighter. More than anything else, Sherman said, “he just wanted to help people. That was his way.”

Kilgore, who joined the Navy in 1988, had been stationed aboard the aircraft carrier in Yokusuka, Japan. The ship had been performing a flight exercise about 125 miles from its home port when a fire broke out in a ship supply room June 20, Navy officials said.

Kilgore, who had been among the first firefighters on the scene, was critically injured when two explosions ripped through the supply compartment, located seven floors below the ship’s flight deck.

After being treated at a hospital in Japan, Kilgore and five other injured men were flown to an Army hospital in San Antonio. Navy officials said Kilgore suffered burns over 85% of his body and that he died when his heart and kidneys stopped functioning.

Lt. Dave Ray, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, said Tuesday that investigators are still trying to determine the exact cause of the Midway explosions. He said it will probably be about a month before the investigation is comleted.