SK2c William Lewis Allen

William Lewis Allen was born Sept. 30, 1896, in Daviess County, Indiana. His mother, Carrie Damewood Allen, was a homemaker and his father, Van Allen, a farmer.

William, a machinist helper, married Helen Maher married in Washington, Indiana, in 1915. They had two daughters and a son who was one when he died of influenza in 1918. The couple divorced before 1930.

By 1935 William Allen was living in San Antonio, Texas, and by spring 1940 he and his second wife, Beulah, were in Houston. Both worked at an insurance company.

He enlisted in the Naval Reserve on Nov. 4, 1940, and a year later went aboard the U.S.S. Arizona. He was a storekeeper and petty officer 2nd class when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sources: the Washington (Indiana) Democrat; the Washington (Indiana) Herald; the Daviess County (Indiana) Democrat; Missouri death certificate; U.S. Department of Defense; California death index; Census; Navy muster rolls. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.