S1c Lloyd B. Curtis

Lloyd B. Curtis graduated in 1938 from high school La Monte, Missouri — population 983 — and worked as a farmhand and at odd jobs for a couple of years.

In the fall of 1940 he went to Los Angeles, where he had family, and found a job at a shipyard. But he needed his birth certificate, which he had to write home to obtain. By the time it arrived, the job had been filled. He enlisted in the Navy that November as an apprentice seaman earning $21 a month. 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.

Mr. Curtis was born July 9, 1919 to Maurice Curtis and Harriet Choplin Curtis, a homemaker.

The sailor was honored at a memorial service in February 1942 at the Camp Branch Baptist Church in Sedalia, Missouri.  The U.S. and Red Cross flags were displayed in front of a congregation the local newspaper described as overflowing with relatives and friends.

Sources: The Sedalia Democrat; draft registration card; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.