COX Robert Denzil Taylor

Robert Denzil Taylor was born Sept. 9, 1921 in Maquoketa City, Iowa 30 miles south of Dubuque, the son of Howard Vernon Taylor, a truck driver for a retail coal company, and Alice Amelia Mann Taylor, a homemaker.

Denzil, as he was known, was the oldest of six sons, including a brother, Manford Dillon, who died at about age five in August 1929. Maquoteka was a county seat with 3,600 residents.

In 1939 the father was employed for 36 weeks, earning $1,438 – the equivalent of about $28,000 in 2022 dollars. Whether Denzil was employed is unknown, but on Oct. 4 he enlisted in the Navy. He 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 on Dec. 7, 1941.

The father was a World War I Army veteran.

Sources: Thank you to niece Eileen Taylor for information.  Navy muster roll, Jackson (Iowa) Sentinel, Iowa birth record, Iowa and U.S. Census, gravestone. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona and Operation 85.