S1c Lloyd B. Curtis

Lloyd B. Curtis graduated in 1938 from high school about 75 miles east of Kansas City in La Monte, Missouri — population 983 — and worked on the family farm and at odd jobs for a couple of years.

In the fall of 1940 he went to Los Angeles, where he had family, and found a job at a shipyard. But he needed his birth certificate, which he had to write home to obtain. By the time it arrived, the job had been filled. He enlisted in the Navy that Nov. 11 and was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Mr. Curtis was born July 9, 1919, to Maurice Curtis and Harriet Choplin Curtis, a homemaker.

A memorial service for Mr. Curtis was held in February 1942 at the Camp Branch Baptist Church in nearby Sedalia, Missouri.  The U.S. and Red Cross flags were displayed in front of a congregation the local newspaper described as overflowing with relatives and friends.

Sources: The Sedalia Democrat; draft registration card; Census; Navy muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.