S2c Robert Niven Frizzell

Robert Niven Frizzell’s father served in World War I and then again in World War II after Robert was killed at Pearl Harbor.

Robert was born March 22, 1923, possibly in Myton, Utah about 85 miles east of Provo, to Francis Niven Frizzell  and Alma Rosa Miller Frizzell. Another son was born premature and survived only two hours in October 1926 in Miami, a mining center in central Arizona. By 1928 a daughter, Rose Mary, was born in Phoenix and in 1930 the family lived in Bagdad about 120 miles northwest, where the father was a mine operator. By 1935  the family, which included five children, had moved to Los Angeles, and in 1940 was in Glenn County in north-central California where the father was superintendent of the county hospital.

Son Robert finished his freshman year at Orland High that spring and enlisted in the Navy on June 21. He 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.

The next April the town of Orland, population 1,366, dedicated a service flag that hung for the duration of the war at the Masonic building. It included 168 stars for the local men already in the military and three gold stars — including one for Mr. Frizzell — for those killed.

His father, 49, enlisted in the Naval Reserve in September 1942 and served three years in northern Idaho and at Mare Island Naval Base, California as a pharmacist’s mate and petty officer first class.