F1c Dwight Fisk Roberts

Letters to Santa were a staple of the early 1920s newspaper in Cimarron, Kansas, population 600 just west of Dodge City, and remain an insight into what kids coveted back then.

Three-year-old Dwight Fisk Roberts asked for a train, nuts, and candy. HIs eight-year-old brother, Homer, wanted a B.B. gun. Their sister, Chelsea, was five when she hoped for a doll along with clothes, a suitcase, a buggy, and also a broom … “and don’t forget what you told Daddy.”

They were the children of George Roberts Jr., a mechanic, and Cecil Griffin Roberts, a homemaker. Dwight, born Feb. 3, 1920, graduated from Cimarron High School in 1938 and enlisted in the Navy that September.

He was a fireman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

In announcing his death, the local newspaper described him as “the kind of a boy everyone admired and enjoyed associating with.”

He was honored in February 1942 at a memorial service at the high school organized by several American Legion posts in Gray County, Kansas.

Sources: The Jacksonian of Cimarron, Kansas; The Hutchinson (Kansas) News; Census; Navy muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.