S1c Dwight Jerome Orr

Dwight Jerome Orr was born April 17, 1922 in Los Angeles County, California. His mother, Alice Robertson Orr, was a homemaker and his father, George W. Orr, a freight agent for Pacific Electric. The mother had immigrated from Canada.

By 1930 the family lived in San Gabriel. The youngest of their three sons, George Jr., was five when he died in May of that year.

The spring 1940 Census said Dwight had completed four years of high school and was still a student. He enlisted in the Navy on Aug. 6. Mr. Orr was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. He was a member of the ship’s tennis team.

His older brother, Robert, served in the Army Air Force, as it was called when he first enlisted, from July 1940 through October 1948 and then again from October 1950 to June 1963, according to his military death file.

Sources: California birth and death index; Census; Navy muster roll; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; “At ‘Em Arizona,” the ship’s newspaper. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.