F2c Gordon Eugene Berry

Three men who spent part or all of their boyhoods in the Pine River Valley in southwest Colorado were killed on the U.S.S. Arizona in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Gordon Eugene Berry was born on Oct. 9, 1922 in Santa Cruz, New Mexico, to Clem Berry, a farmer, and Edith Scalf Berry, a homemaker. The father died of pneumonia about 10 years later in Kansas, and the boy moved to the Pine River community of Bayfield  to live with an older brother, Charles, and his family. His mother later remarried and also moved to Bayfield.

He and Harold Milton Carmack were 1940 graduates of Bayfield High, according to the yearbook and a local newspaper account of the graduation ceremonies.

Mr. Berry worked as a farmhand before he enlisted on Nov. 7, 1940. Like his classmate, he was a fireman second class when he was killed. Mr. Carmack had enlisted two days earlier.

Mr. Carmack was born Jan. 2, 1922 in Colorado to Oscar Carmack, a farmer, and Lena Darnall Carmack, a homemaker.

The third Arizona sailor, Ralph Elmer Fife, was born Jan. 23, 1920, in Newton, Kansas, to Raymond Fife, a farmer, and Elsie Cain Fife, a homemaker. His mother died when he was five and he moved to the valley to live with an aunt and uncle, Alta and Linus Rathjin.

He said he was living with his father in California when he enlisted in July 1940. His application said he was a high school graduate but it did not name the school.

Mr. Fife was a seaman first class when he was killed.

The Pine River Valley Heritage Museum has an exhibit honoring the three Arizona sailors and other local men who served in World War II.  And all three men were honored in 1950 when Bayfield Presbyterian church dedicated a new organ in memory of local men killed in World War II.