Neil Stanley Lewison was born May 15, 1916 and grew up in the west-central Wisconsin town of Melrose.

He was the youngest of six children of Nels Lewison, a Norwegian immigrant, and Wilhelmina Affeldt Lewison, a Wisconsin native. One child, Wilmer, was eight when he died without warning in 1920. The father, a painter, died of a heart attack in 1928.

Neil was a Boy Scout and graduated from Melrose High School in 1935.

He left Melrose — population 497 — to enlist in the Navy on Sept. 10, 1935. He was a fire controlman and petty officer third class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

A memorial service paid tribute to Mr. Lewison in February 1942 at the Methodist church in Melrose, and its American Legion Post was named in his honor. There is a cenotaph in his memory at Melrose Cemetery, where his parents and brother are buried.

Sources: the Winona (Minnesota) Republican-Herald; the Winona Daily News; The La Crosse (Wisconsin) Tribune; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; cenotaph at Melrose Cemetery. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.