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S1c Theron A. Blankenship
Theron Andrew Blankenship was born March 20, 1922 in Morgan County in north-central Alabama.
His father, William Matthew Blankenship, was a farmer and his mother, Leona Chaney Blankenship, a homemaker. The family included 11 children.
Theron completed 9th grade at Morgan County High School in 1940. He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program.
Mr. Blankenship 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. 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 at Huntsville, Alabama.
A cenotaph in his memory at the New Center Baptist Church Cemetery in Hartselle, Alabama, spells his first name as Thearn, though he signed an Navy papers at Theron.
An older brother, William, enlisted in the Army in March 1944 and was a private in the 60th Infantry when he was killed in Belgium that Oct. 20. His body was returned to the United State in 1947 and buried at the New Center Baptist Church Cemetery.
A younger brother, James Paul, served in the Army in the Korean war.