S1c Alfred Grant Heath

Alfred Grant Heath was born March 15, 1916 in Spencer in central Wisconsin to Grant Heath, a druggist, and Ella Stoltenow Heath, a homemaker.

The boy was two when his mother died. He went to live with an aunt and uncle in Longmont, Colorado north of Denver in the early 1920s but returned to Wisconsin some time after 1930 and lived with another aunt and uncle at Stratford about 12 miles east of Spencer. A brief mention in a 1935 news article said he was at Holmen, a Civilian Conservation Corps camp near La Crosse. The CCC was a federal Depression-era jobs program for young men. Those at Holmen worked on reforestation, stream bank protection, and soil conservation projects.

On March 13, 1940 Mr. Heath enlisted in the Navy two days before his 24th birthday. He was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

In the aftermath of the explosion that sunk the Arizona, he was taken to the Solace, a hospital ship on the north side of Pearl Harbor, but died there on Dec. 10. He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in the Punchbowl at Honolulu.

Sources: Marshfield (Wisconsin) News-Herald; Census; burial records; Navy muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.