Robert Beryle Grissinger was born March 29, 1923 at Savanna, Illinois to Pauline Asam Grissinger, a homemaker, and Harry B. Grissinger, a rail mill worker for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad and the leader of a popular dance band.

By the time of the spring 1940 Census the parents had divorced and young Mr. Grissinger lived with his father, step-mother, and a brother in Savanna, a town of nearly 5,000 in  northwest Carroll County near the Mississippi River and Iowa. He had completed 9th grade at the high school in Savanna. As a youth, he was a carrier for the Rockford Morning Star.

Mr. Grissinger enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program, in July 1940.

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. 4608 at Rupert, Idaho.

When he applied to the Navy he said he wanted to make it his career. He enlisted on April 18, 1941, and was a seaman second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sources: the Thomson (Illinois) Review; The Daily Chronicle of DeKalb, Illinois; the Freeport (Illinois) Journal-Standard; the Morning Star of Rockford, Illinois; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; U.S. Defense Department. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.