S2c Charles Andrew Jr. Ivey

Charles Andrew Ivey Jr. was born July 28, 1919 at Tulsa, Oklahoma. His mother, Margaret Mahaffey Ivey, was a homemaker and his father a boiler inspector for a railroad.

The boy was about four when his mother died.

The spring 1930 Census identified Charles Jr. and his brother, Robert, who was two years younger, as orphans. That was inaccurate. Though they lived with a couple at Beatie, Arkansas, their father was alive and still worked for the railroad in Tulsa.

By April 1935 Charles Jr. was living in Washington County (county seat Fayetteville) in northwest Arkansas. The spring 1940 Census said he lived with one of his mother’s sisters and her husband at Compton, California near Los Angeles. He had completed three years of high school and worked 17 weeks in 1939 as a “cementman” for a housing business. He earned $340.

Mr. Ivey enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 4, 1940. He was a seaman second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sources: Census; grave markers; Springdale (Arkansas) News; Defense Department. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.