F2c Charles Henry Bibby

Charles Henry Bibby was born in Oak Creek, Colorado on Feb. 16, 1919, but by the next year his family moved to Jefferson County, Alabama. His father, Henry, was a salesman for a retail grocery and later a lime keeper at a coal mine and operator of a brick kiln. His mother, Genevieve Kennedy Bibby, was a homemaker.

The son graduated from Corner High School in Dora, about 25 miles northwest of Birmingham. He worked at Hutchings Auto Service in Selma for a year and a half as a mechanic. By 1939 he was a cab driver, earning $706 for 40 weeks of work. His father worked the full year and earned $900. Their combined income supported a household of seven.

Charles Henry enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 4, 1940, and was aboard the U.S.S. Arizona by that December. Mr. Bibby was a fireman second class on the battleship when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

A younger brother, William Harrison Bibby, served in the Army during World War II.

In late January 1942 his mother wrote to Navy Secretary Frank Knox asking whether it was possible that Charles had survived the attack and been assigned to another ship. She asked where the Navy had checked hospitals for him. “I just cannot believe he is gone,” she wrote. Families of other Arizona men wrote similar desperate letters.