Howard Lee Penton was born April 30, 1915 in Rockford, Alabama. His mother, Sarah Waites Penton, was a homemaker and his father, Julius Lee Penton, a farmer.

The 1920 Census identified all eight of the children in the home as farm laborers, even down to a three-year-old daughter. The Pentons eventually had 11 children, including a son, Duward, who was 13 when he died in 1926.

By spring 1940 Howard was a lodger in Homewood, Alabama just outside Birmingham. He worked as a carpenter in 1939, earning $130 for 26 weeks of labor. He said he’d completed one year at the high school in Clanton, Alabama.

Mr. Penton enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 23, 1940. He 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.

Sources: Census; Navy muster roll; grave markers; sister Vera’s obituary. Mr. Penton’s name first appeared in the February 1920 Census, which said he was 4 and 5/12. That would make his birth year 1915. However, later Census records provide a range of 1915 to 1917. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.