Remembering three locals who died in Pearl Harbor attack

This week marked the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Three local boys lost their lives on that Day of Infamy. Here’s more from a Dec. 7, 1991, story.

Ralph “Red” Hollis (above) had joined the Palm Beach Fire Department. His amateur radio skills would later help him tell the world of America’s third-deadliest natural disaster: the 1928 hurricane.

He arrived Sept. 18, 1941 in Hawaii, assigned to the Arizona.

Claude Rich (above), of West Palm Beach, turned to the military as a way out of poverty. Never did anyone consider the he’d come into harm’s way. He also was assigned the Arizona.

Eugene “Gene” Lish (above) was good enough on clarinet to get A’s and a spot on the Fort Pierce High School band all four years. He joined the Navy and was assigned to the West Virginia. Its base: Pearl Harbor.

Dec. 7, 1941, was cool and rainy in South Florida.

The Sunday morning paper carried an ominous front page story: “President Roosevelt has dispatched a personal message to Emperor Hirohito of Japan in the midst of darkening war clouds in the Far East.”

Soon it was midafternoon in West Palm Beach; 7:55 a.m. in Pearl Harbor.

The West Virginia took seven torpedoes, which broke open fuel compartments. Fumes from the low-grade crude oil filled the lower decks. Lish was among those overpowered. Newspaper clippings declared him the first Floridian killed in a war too new to have a name.

The West Virginia was the first ship attacked, at 7:56 a.m., so if Lish was killed immediately, he was just minutes ahead of Hollis and Rich.

The Arizona took four direct hits from 1,760-pound converted battleship shells. The deadliest one struck just about 8:05 a.m. Seconds later 1.7 million pounds of gunpowder ignited.

It is believed about 1,000 of the 1,103 deaths on the Arizona — half of the death toll at Pearl Harbor — occurred at that moment.

The radio room was about 50 feet from the center of the blast. Relatives and friends believe Ralph Hollis and Claude Rich were killed instantly, perhaps vaporized. Their bodies never were recovered.

In honoring these three, we honor all lost on that day and in the line of service.

Tags: death, World War II

U-boat story triggers memory of ancestor

We’ve written a few times, most recently this summer, about the grim stretch between February and May 1942 when U-boats sank 24 ships off Florida, 16 of them from Cape Canaveral to Boca Raton.

Frank Leonard Terry, 23, was the only survivor when a torpedo sank the 500-foot W.D. Anderson, filled with oil, 12 miles north of Jupiter almost 70 years ago, on Feb. 22, 1942. He’s now 93 and lives in eastern Pennsylvania.

William Kelly saw our story this summer all the way in Oxford, England. It hit home. Among the Anderson’s dead was its second mate, Mahlon E. Stitsel, 37.

“Mahlon was the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. John Stitsel and brother of my grandfather, Glen Stitsel,” Kelly wrote.

“Tragically, another brother, Elvan E. Stitsel, also enlisted in the merchant marines, was killed exactly one week before Mahlon, in a freak accident which occurred on board his tanker, Point Breeze, in the relatively safe waters of Long Island Sound, New York. The tanker ran aground, triggering an explosion in the engine room which knocked Elvan overboard. There were no other casualites. Elvan’s body was never recovered.

An article in a Defiance, Ohio, newspaper, provided by Kelly, said, “These men gave their lives to their country, even though they were not enlisted in the armed services.

“Patriotism and devotion to duty inspired them to take risks fully as dangerous as the servicemen meet, and just as necessary to the winning of the war.”

Terry said in October of this year he doesn’t specifically remember Stitsel but he still remembers his own ordeal. Covered in oil, he bobbed for hours in water so cold he thought sharks had bitten off his legs and was surprised when rescuers told him they were still there.

“It was my first trip to Florida,” Terry said in a 1992 interview for a Palm Beach Post section marking 50 years since World War II came to Florida. “I didn’t like the experience.”

Frank Leonard Terry of Parkesburg, Pa., in 1992. He was the only survivor of the W.D. Anderson, sunk in 1942 by U-boat ‘off the South Florida coast.’ (AP file photo)

Update: Our recent columns on Autorama said the great “Mural of America” now hangs at the Boynton Beach Woman’s Club. Janet DeVries, archivist at the Boynton Beach City Library, alerted us that we’d been given bad information. She said the Woman’s Club mural is by the same artist, Bernard Thomas, but it shows a history of Boynton Beach. The “America” mural is in the library’s archives — or at least one 8-foot by 4-foot panel of it. DeVries says the rest is believed lost to history.

Tags: art, automobiles, museums, World War II

This week in history: Boca Raton Army Air Field opens

On Oct. 15, 1942, Boca Raton Army Air Field opened on 5,860-acres between Yamato and Palmetto Park Roads, from Military Trail to Dixie Highway. It was a flight and radar training base and home to some 16,000 troops. Boca Raton had fewer than 1,000 residents at the time.

The base was in operation until 1947. When ownership of the land was returned to the city and the state, part became Boca Raton Airport and the much of the rest eventually became Florida Atlantic University; the school’s unusually wide parking lots are former runways.

Read more about the Boca Raton Army Air Field at Palm Beach County History Online and in Small Town, Big Secrets: Inside the Boca Raton Army Airfield During World War II by Sally J. Ling

The Provost Marshal’s headquarters at the Boca Raton Army Air Field, around 1942. (Photo courtesy of the Boca Raton Historical Society)

Aerial view of the Boca Raton Army Air Field. (Photo courtesy of the Boca Raton Historical Society)

Col. N. L. Cote (front, center) escorts Maj. Gen. Walter R. Weaver (front, left) and others on a tour of the Boca Raton Army Air Field in this undated photo, circa 1940s. Historians have identified the building in the background as the Mizner Oaks Apartments. (Photo courtesy of Boca Raton Historical Society)

Tags: Boca Raton, Boca Raton Army Air Field, This Week in History, World War II

Historical society seeks details on Camp Higgins

For many years, Debi Murray, the archivist at the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, has been an invaluable source. Recently she asked us to ask you for more about Camp Higgins.

It was one of many federal installations that sprang up in South Florida during World War II.

They include Morrison Field (now Palm Beach International Airport), Camp Murphy (now Jonathan Dickinson State Park near Hobe Sound) and Boca Raton Army Air Field (now the Boca Raton airport and Florida Atlantic University).

“Camp Higgins operated from early 1942 or earlier, at the undeveloped northern tip of Palm Beach, bordered by North Ocean Boulevard, Indian Road, the ocean, and Lake Worth Inlet,” the historical society’s website says.

“The camp accommodated about 200 men, sent for rest and recuperation. They lived in wooden-sided canvas tents, and kept a few tanks and sandbagged gun positions on the dunes. In 1943 the commanding officer of Camp Higgins was Lt. C.B. Hindman.”

The society quoted Philip H. Reid Jr., who lived nearby as a boy and recalled in 1981, “There were eight or ten North End boys who could often be found wandering through the camp, climbing on the tanks, visiting the tents, and talking to the soldiers. We often accompanied the soldiers when they hunted for sea turtle eggs, which they unearthed and cooked.”

Debi writes the camp had been deactivated by September 1942, when its recreation hall was loaded onto a truck and moved to Morrison Field.

Readers: Can you help?

American soldiers parade down Worth Avenue in this World War II-era photo. During the war, Palm Beach was a hotbed of patriotism, support for Allied troops, and even warlike action as German U-boats sank U.S. ships off the South Florida coast and prompted officials to mandate countless blackouts on the island. As Florida airfields and other facilities became home to military bases, uniformed personnel were everywhere, including marching in parades along the avenue. While not pictured, one can assume Palm Beach’s hundreds of Volunteers for Victory were marching, too. Volunteers for Victory operated several war-effort endeavors, ranging from a bathhouse at the beach to a soldier’s canteen. (Photo courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)

Update: Palm Beach State College dean Ginger Pedersen, who runs her own local history Web page, wrote about the mystery behind the name of Congress Avenue: “I think the origin is more tied to the Westgate subdivision, which was started in the land boom. I too have found the newspaper referenced back to 1933. The best solution is that the road was a connector between Okeechobee and Belvedere. I think “Congress” in this case means a “connector.” Later when Palm Acres was platted, they took the name and extended it first south across the airport, then later north. Congress was not extended south to Boca (Raton) until the 1960s.

Tags: Palm Beach, place names, World War II

The war off our shore

In 1992 the Palm Beach Post published a 50th anniversary commemorative special section about the U-Boat sinkings that brought World War II right to the shores of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast. The Post also asked readers “Where were you in ‘42?” and printed some of their remembrances of the war years.

The war off our shore: World War II, 50 years later

Tags: World War II