- Rank:
- Branch:
- Home Town:
- Date Of Birth:
- Disposition:
- Family DNA on File:
GM3c Stanley Gordon Enger
Stanley Gordon Enger, known to friends as Tutty, graduated from West High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1937.
His family called him Shadow because he had wanderlust and ran away a few times when he was a boy, his sister Katharine recalled years later.
He served in the Civilian Conservations 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 serve in Co. 3707 at Spruce Lake, Minnesota.
Mr. Enger enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 3, 1939 and was a gunner’s mate 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.
One of nine children, he was born Feb. 4, 1920, in Minneapolis to Carl Enger, a creamery worker, and Hattie Lundquist Enger, a homemaker.
The youngest child, Perry, told a reporter in 1982 that his mother worshipped Stanley and “always said he was the best. Growing up, as kids, we were always singing the Navy song, ‘Anchors Aweigh.’ Mom always cried. She always said he would be coming home. Never believed he was dead.”
A younger brother, Donald, enlisted in the Navy on the first anniversary of Stanley’s death and served until January 26, 1946. Another younger brother, Perry, served in the Air Force in the 1950s.
Sources: The Minneapolis Star Tribune; West High School yearbook; Census; Minnesota birth index; 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.