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COX Lyle Bernard Dean
“Each duty done, they rest in peace” is inscribed between two markers at Walnut Hill Cemetery in Kingman, Kansas.
The stones honor the memory of brothers Lyle Bernard Dean and John Almon Dean, both killed in World War II.
Lyle was a coxswain 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. John, a cavalry sergeant, was killed May 7, 1945 in the battle of Luzon in the Philippines.
They were the sons of William Dean, a carpenter, and Effie Walck Dean, a homemaker and later a waitress.
Lyle was born in Kingman in central Kansas on Sept. 10, 1921, and completed 9th grade at the local high school. His parents divorced after 1930. Lyle also served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program.
The CCC, as it was known, employed single men 18 to 25 to plant trees, build roads and trails and make other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families. He served in Co. 729 at Kingsdown, Kansas.
He enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 27, 1939. A memorial service for Mr. Dean and two other Kingman County men killed in the war was held in February 1942 at the school gymnasium.