Avis Boyd Putnam was born on either July 29 or Aug. 29 in 1922 in Frederick, Oklahoma. His mother, Octavia Briscoe Putnam, was a homemaker and his father, Nomer Putnam, a watchman and later a paper mill foreman.

By April 1930 the family lived in Alabama, where the mother and two of Avis’s three brothers had been born. They moved again, to the Houston, Texas, area, by April 1935. Avis completed 8th grade at the high school in the Houston suburb of Galena Park. He also worked as a laborer in nearby Pasadena, Texas, for Merritt Chapman & Scott, a company best known for marine construction projects.

Mr. Putnam enlisted in the Navy on Aug. 1, 1940. He was a ship’s cook and petty officer third class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

His two older brothers also served in World War II — Lon in the Marine Corps and Clifton in the Army.

Sources: Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; graver markers; Texas death certificate. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.