Walter M. Hackett Sr. of South Colby died Aug. 26, 2006, at Life Care Center in Port Orchard. A long-time shipyard worker who was involved in a number of community groups, he was 95.

Mr. Hackett was born to Walter and Hester (James) Hackett on July 30, 1911, in Corning, Iowa. He graduated from Red Oak (Iowa) High School in 1931 and attended community college for a time in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

He left Iowa at the height of the Great Depression and worked in logging camps in California and Washington. While working on a riverboat in Mount Vernon, he met his future wife, Irene Broeknshire, whom he married in January 1942 in Portland. She died in 2003.

In 1939, Mr. Hackett went to work at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. He joined the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942 and became a landing barge driver during World War II where he served in the Aleutians and in the battles of Tarawa and Saipan.

After the war he returned to PSNS where he worked for 33 years as a shipwright until his retirement in 1973. Mr. Hackett was involved with a number of organizations, serving as hospital chairman for the Port Orchard and Bremerton posts of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a member of the Bremerton and Port Orchard Eagles as well as the South Colby Methodist Church, and was a Cubmaster and Scoutmaster in Bremerton Boy Scout organizations.

He is survived by his sons Walter (Sherry) Hackett Jr. of Bremerton, Gerald (Susan) Hackett of Olalla and James (Barbara) Hackett of Walla Walla; eight grandchildren; nieces Susan Alexander of Silverdale and Dorothy Nuckolls of Red Oak; and nephews Harold Schmeckel of Salem-Keizer, Ore., and Marvin Bailey of Red Oak.

A memorial service was Sept. 1 at South Colby Methodist Church.