S2c Elvis Author Alexander

Elvis Author Alexander was born July 1, 1916, in Beebe, Arkansas to Charles E. Alexander, a farmer, and Lilley Alma Edwards Alexander, a homemaker. The town had about 1,000 residents.

By September 1918 the family was 20 miles south-southeast in slightly larger Carlisle, where the father was a farm hand. As reported in the census of January 1920 they had moved over 200 miles northeast to Castor, Missouri and the father was a farm owner. Elvis attended Trammel School at Parma, Missouri, from 1925-1933 and completed 8th grade. He also worked as a helper for the foreman of a nearby land company.

The mother died nearby of eclampsia in April 1928 when Elvis was still 11. The family included four other children and then, after the father remarried, a half-sister.

Elvis worked in Cherry Creek in east-central Nevada in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program for young men. 

He enlisted in the Navy on April 21, 1941 in Salt Lake City, Utah and completed his basic training at the U.S. Naval Training Station in San Diego, California. He reported for duty and boarded the U.S.S. Arizona on July 13, 1941 and was a seaman 2nd class when he was killed on the U.S.S. Arizona in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.