S2c Charles Thomas Bardon

Charles Thomas Bardon was born May 27, 1924, in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, to Eula Sallee Bardon and Wesley Bardon.

The boy was 14 when his father killed himself after he was committed to a sanitarium in early 1939. A local news report said the father had lost his job when the oil company for which he worked shut down.

The spring 1940 Census said Charles lived with his mother and younger sister in Bixby, now a suburb of Tulsa but then a town of about 1,300. Mrs. Bardon operated a home laundry and both children, 15 and 14, were students. Charles left Bixby High School after 9th grade. He also served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program.

The CCC, as it was known, employed single men 18 to 25 to plant trees, build roads and trails and make other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families.

He enlisted in the Navy on May 29, 1941.

Mr. Bardon 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.

Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5579 was organized in Bixby in 1956 and named in Mr. Bardon’s honor. Subsequent mergers now have its name as Bardon-Humphries Post 1327. Larry Humphries was killed in Vietnam.

Mr. Bardon’s father served on a submarine during World War I.

Sources: The Tulsa (Oklahoma) World; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; Bixby Historical Society; Oklahoma court records. Navy photo. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.