As did most families during the Great Depression, the Greenfields of Silverton, Oregon, hustled to earn a living.

Carroll Gale “Ted drove a truck for a creamery in 1939. An older brother, Clarence, was a service station attendant. Their father, Hansford “Harry”, labored for a Works Progress Administration construction project. The WPA was a federal jobs program. The three men earned a combined $1,508 in 1939.

Ted enlisted in the Navy in October 1940 — a path for many young men in search of a steady paycheck.

He was a seaman first class when he was killed on the U.S.S. Arizona in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. He had just returned to the ship and was headed to the mess hall when the attack began.

Ted was born Dec. 25, 1919 in Naponee, Nebraska, then a village of 263 people. His father was a farmer and his mother, Alice, a homemaker. Ted graduated from the local high school in 1938 and the family soon moved to Oregon.

His father, variously described in Oregon news stories as a constable or a special policeman, died of a heart attack in February 1942 while standing on a street talking to fellow officers.

His brothers also served in World War II — Clarence in the Army and Lloyd in the Navy. They survived.

Sources: the Statesman Journal of Salem, Oregon; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; Department of Veterans Affairs. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.