S1c Albert Lewis Ward

Albert Lewis Ward was kind and always smiling, according to a memoriam in the 1942 yearbook of Sapulpa High School about 12 miles southwest of Tulsa.

Mr. Ward had been in the school glee club and printers club, and was a senior when he quit school to join the Navy on Dec. 7, 1939. Two years later 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. He had been studying to be a linotype operator for the Navy.

Mr. Ward was born on Jan. 26, 1921, but where is uncertain. His mother, Emily Francis Pollock Ward, reportedly died in July 1922. His father, Truman Ward, was a laborer in Sapulpa Township in 1920.

By April 1930 the father had remarried and was an oil field worker in Beggs about 18 miles south of Sapulpa. The son was still in Sapulpa but living with a maternal aunt and her husband – Dora Pollock Gault and Joe Gault.

After his death, the American Legion post in Sapulpa changed its name to include his last name. Albert Lewis Ward Road in Sapulpa is also named in his honor.

Sources: Sapulpa (Oklahoma) Daily Herald; the Tulsa (Oklahoma) World; Sapulpa High yearbooks; Missouri marriage license; Census; Navy muster roll. Navy photograph. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.