RM3c Russell Dale Corning

Russell Dale Corning was born Nov. 30, 1920 in the central Colorado county of Fremont. His mother, Roberta, was a homemaker, and his father, Hadley Leon Corning, a farmer. They were Methodists.

Russell was the youngest of their three children, born when his parents were in their 40s. He moved with his parents after 1935 to Denver, where he graduated from East High School in 1939.  He played sax in the dance orchestra and was in the band.

Mr. Corning enlisted in the Naval Reserve in the fall of 1940 and was a radioman 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.

His brother, Leon, served in the Army in 1944.

Mr. Corning was one of four Arizona victims who attended or graduated from East High, which in the late 1930s and 1940s was a large school with about 650 graduates each year. The others were Edwin C. Hamilton – a 1941 grad – and brothers Francis and Norman Morse. The Morses left school before graduating.

Sources: The Denver (Colorado) Post; Colorado marriage license; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; East High yearbook; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs death file. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.