Robert Kovar was born Dec. 12, 1921 at Hinsdale, Illinois. His mother, Mary Willem Kovar, was a homemaker and his father, Stefan Kovar, a punch-press operator. The parents were immigrants from Czechoslovakia. 

The family moved to a farm at Wayland in southwest Michigan in about 1930. Mrs. Kovar died on Dec. 22, 1934 of tuberculosis and heart failure. The father married Amelia Skultety the next summer.

Robert attended Wayland High School. He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program that 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. Robert served two years in Co. 3664 at Ontario, Wisconsin. When he was honorably discharged on March 31, 1940 he was a quarry team leader.

He enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 9, 1940 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.

He was a member of St. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church in Gun Lake, Michigan.

His family included about 10 children and at least one other sibling also served in the military. Fred Kovar was in the Army in Germany from 1956 to 1958.

Sources: The Allegan (Michigan) News; Census; Department of Defense; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; grave marker; Michigan death certificate and marriage license; family obituaries. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.