Ray Ellison Reed was born Feb. 12, 1922 in Checotah, Oklahoma. His mother, Gertie Liles Reed, was a homemaker and his father, John E. Reed, a farmer. They had moved from their native Arkansas to Oklahoma a few years before Ray was born. The family included an older daughter.

When Ray applied to the Navy in early 1941 he was living in Okmulgee and had completed 10th grade in 1938 at a school in nearby Nuyaka.  He also served in Co. 2823 of the Civilian Conservation Corps at Morris, Oklahoma. The CCC, as it was known, was a Depression-era federal jobs program. It 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 Jan. 25, 1941. 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.

Another Okmulgee man, Clyde Richard Williams, enlisted in the Navy a few months before Mr. Reed and also was killed in the attack. Okmulgee was a town of just 16,000 back then. Williams was a musician in the Arizona band.

Sources: The Okmulgee (Oklahoma) Daily Times; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.