Peter Charles Gordon Jr. was born March 31, 1920 at Primero in southeast Colorado. It’s now a ghost town.

His mother, Antonia Cermak Gordon, was a homemaker and his father a coal miner. The mother immigrated from Germany and the father from Austria.

Peter Junior, known as Pete, graduated in 1938 from nearby Trinidad High School an. He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs. program.

The CCC, as it was known, employed single men 18 to 25 to plant trees, build roads and trails and make other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families. He served in Co. 2818 at Sterling, Colorado.

He enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 13, 1939.

Mr. Gordon was a fireman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sources: Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; U.S. Department of Veterans Administration master index. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.