LCDR John Edmund French

John Edmund French was a 1922 graduate of the Naval Academy, where the yearbook noted “Eddie’s success with ladies, judged by the volume of mail he received. However, it also said that he remained true to the “only one” back in “God’s country.” ” 

That, apparently, was a reference to Marian Falkenstein, whom he married in 1925 at Staten Island, NY. Her father was a Navy captain.

Mr. French served on many vessels during his naval career and taught at the Naval Academy. He was a lieutenant commander in charge of navigation on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Mr. French was born March 6, 1900 in Durham in southwestern Maine, to George E. French, a railroad postal clerk, and Alma Crosman French, a homemaker. They moved almost 70 miles north-northeast to Skowhegan, Maine when he was a child.

The family included two other children — a girl who died soon after birth in 1906 and a boy who was four when he died of hydrocephalus in 1913.

John graduated from Skowhegan High in 1917 and attended Bowdoin College near Durham for a year before entering the Naval Academy.

About a week after the Japanese attack, Lt. Commander Samuel Fuqua, one of the few officers who survived and senior among them, borrowed a diver’s helmet and gear to enter the submerged battleship to look for the body of Mr. French, who had a stateroom across from his two decks below the rear turrets. He found the remains floating under a mattress. Off duty, Mr. French had slept in the Sunday morning of the surprise attack.

In 1947, after the war had ended, Mr. French’s body was returned to the mainland and buried at Arlington National Cemetery alongside that of his wife, who died in 1945. They were survived by their son, Donald, who was born in 1926.

Sources: the Portland (Maine) Press Herald; “Battleship Arizona, An Illustrated History,” by Paul Stillwell; 1922 “Lucky Bag,” the Naval Academy yearbook; Navy records; Census; New York marriage license; Congressional Medal of Honor. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.