S2c Gordon Elliott Veeder

Gordon Elliott Veeder was born March 29, 1922 in Idaho Falls, Idaho. His mother, Erma Elliott Veeder, was a homemaker, and his father, Albert Veeder, a salesman of farm implements and later a heavy equipment operator for road construction.

Within a few years the family moved to Boise. At Lowell elementary school the son was a member of the police patrol and one year played “Silent Night” on a harmonica solo during the Christmas program. He attended Boise High School, where he was a corporal in the school’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. The 1940 yearbook identified him as a sophomore. Mr. Veeder worked at the Western Union office and at the Rialto and Rio theaters.

He enlisted in the Navy on Nov. 4, 1940, and 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.

A plaque in memory of Mr. Veeder and another local man killed in the war was dedicated on Memorial Day 1963 next to a flagpole in the veterans area of Ann Morrison Park in Boise.

Sources: the Rock Island (Illinois) Argus; the (Boise) Idaho Statesman; Census; Navy muster roll; Boise High School yearbook. Newspaper photograph. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.