George Robert Sheffer was born June 18, 1914 in Goshen, Indiana. His mother, Minnie May Sayles Sheffer, was a homemaker, and his father George C. Sheffer, was then a celery grower and later a long-time owner of Sheffer Market.

The son was nearly 10 when his mother died of septicemia following a 1924 miscarriage.

He completed 8th grade and 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 was in Co. 513, which worked at Clark State Forest north of Henryville, Indiana.

Young Mr. Sheffer enlisted in the Navy on Jan. 10, 1940. He 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.