- December 4, 2025
Turtle Patrol volunteer Mickey Norris was not expecting to find a small wooden casket along the beach when he was working turtle patrol on Sept. 21.
Inside, he said, were white U.S. Navy uniform hats.
“The first thing that we were thinking was, it was a burial casket,” Norris said.
Norris and fellow Palm Coast resident Connie Balliet found the casket a little before sunrise. Unfortunately, he said, it was initially missing its U.S. Navy emblem, but he and Balliet were able to find it and get it back from the people who had removed it.
Nobody initially knew where the casket came from, he said, it didn’t take long for him to find out. Norris said it just took four hours and a few phone calls to find out its origin.
The white hats are known as Dixie Cup hats and they were from a nearby naval station celebrating a promotion to a new rank, he said. A person he spoke to at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station told him it was a tradition to place the white hats in small wood caskets, and the casket was likely either from the celebration at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station or one from a Virginia Beach base.
“They throw them overboard off the ship to indicate their promotion to some type of ranking officer,” Norris said.
The person at the Jacksonville base would not give them the rank the officer achieved, or more information to identify them. Inside one hat the name “Harris, A.C.” can be seen.
A source at the public affairs office of the Naval History and Heritage Command wrote over email that this ceremony is typically conducted "during the final stages of enlisted promotion from a Navy mid-level petty officer (E6) to Chief Petty Officer (E7)."
Norris said he kept the casket until he could find out if it was from a deceased naval officer.
“I wanted to make sure that the family of the passing sailor would be able to get their possessions back,” Norris said. “But once I found out about the celebration, they said, ‘Don't worry anymore about keeping it. It's not of interest to the sailor.’”
Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the promotion was for new officers. The tradition is typically celebrated by the enlisted becoming Chief petty officers. The article was update on Sept. 29.
