Friday, September 1, 1939

An important day in modern world history. Everyone should know it.

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June 6, 1944: D-Day

The front page of The Salt Lake Tribune from the next day, reporting on the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

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One of the sailors killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor has finally been buried, at Arlington.

Walter Rogers was his name. He was from South Dakota and stationed on the USS Oklahoma.

“He was just a typical teenager. He loved cars and all things mechanical. It was during the Depression, and no one had any money. We were a very poor family, but he was an ambitious teenager. And he would scrounge around for parts for a car. And he finally was able to accumulate enough parts to make a functioning automobile.”

Scientists used mitochondrial DNA and dental analysis to identify Rogers’ remains.

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1941, Seattle

My great uncle, Everett Franklin Hay, lived in Seattle from 1939 to 1941, when he married his longtime girlfriend, Grace Leek, and his father, George, died from cancer.

My great uncle died earlier this year, in February. He lived to the age of 101. Before his death, I interviewed him in-depth multiple times about his life and what he remembered.

He taught me a bunch, indulging what corn cribs are, the storms of the Dust Bowl, and a slew of humorous stories, his particular talent, which I wish had been documented in some way.

While living in Seattle, from 1939 to 1941, he was recorded in the phone book, which are quite hefty to lug around. He lived with the Neilson family, who came from the same South Dakota town as him, Lake Preston.

Nineteen forty-one was a pivotal year. Everett married his longtime girlfriend, his father died from cancer, and the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting America’s entry into the Second World War.

The death of his father, George Hay, impelled him and his newlywed wife to return to South Dakota, where he took over operation of the family farm, until doctor’s orders made him give it up in 1953, the year they returned to the Pacific Northwest, moving to a berry farm in the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

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Missing In Action, But Not Forgotten

Like my great-great uncle twenty-seven years before, Second Lt. Samuel Gordon Leftenant went missing in Europe while fighting in a war. But his sisters haven’t forgotten. An empty coffin was recently buried in Arlington in his honor, below a gravestone with his name and surrounded by comrades. His remains have never been found.

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