Gerald Fay Stillings was born in Morgan, Minnesota, on Sept. 23, 1914. His mother, Bertha Alta White Stillings, was a homemaker and his father, Everett W. Stillings, a farmer. The family included two younger children.

By 1930 the Stillings lived in Nampa, Idaho ,west of Boise. The parents soon divorced and in December 1932 the mother married D.R. Hughes in Thurston County, Washington.

Brief news articles said young Gerald was a Boy Scout and graduated in 1933 from high school in Yelm, a Thurston County town of 378.

The 1940 Census said he was a farmer and lived at Yelm with his mother, stepfather (also a farmer), and two siblings. When he applied to the Navy that fall he said he’d been a laborer for two years at Centralia Power Co.

Mr. Stillings enlisted in the Navy on Nov. 9, 1940. He was a fireman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sources: the Tacoma (Washington) Daily Ledger; The Olympian of Olympia, Washington; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; Washington marriage license; military registration card. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.