S2c Robert Frank Conrad

Robert Frank Conrad was an outstanding student at Venice High School in Los Angeles.

He was a member of the Ephebian society, an honor given to one of every 40 students in the Los Angeles school system. He also was a member of the Roman Lamp group sponsored by the California Scholarship Federation.

He was president of the school’s Latin and Thrift Association clubs, a member of its public speaking group, and performed in two plays his senior year, 1940.

Mr. Conrad then attended the University of California at Los Angeles for a semester, also working there part time as a secretary. He quit to join the Navy in February 1941.

Mr. Conrad 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.

He was born July 26, 1922, in Great Falls, Montana, to Clarence W. Conrad, a grocer, and Georgiana Gall Conrad, a homemaker. The father was a lieutenant in the Army during the final year of World War I, training in aviation.

By 1930 the family had moved to Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley between Fresno and Bakersfield. The father was a salesman for a department store. By 1935 they were in Los Angeles.

Sources: Great Falls (Montana) Tribune; The Los Angeles Times; 1940 Venice High yearbook; Census; Navy muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.