Samuel William Haden, born Feb. 5, 1916, was not quite 14 months old when his mother, Laura Lulu Poots Haden, died in Topeka, Kansas in 1917.

Samuel and his sister, Margaret, older by about three years, went to live with their grandparents, William and Margaret Haden. She died on the boy’s 7th birthday, and his grandfather died when he was 16.

Sam then went to live with an uncle and aunt, John and Arlena Haden, in Clay Center, Kansas.

He attended Northwest High School in Kansas City for one year, in 1935, completing 11th grade. He worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era jobs program.

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 also worked for three months as a plasterer’s helper at Clay Center. He enlisted in the Navy on Jan. 23, 1940.

Mr. Haden 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, Dec. 7, 1941.

His name is etched on the grave marker for his mother and grandmother at Lincoln Cemetery in Clay Center.

His father, John Haden, lived in Kansas and Missouri.

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Sources: The Clay Center (Kansas) Dispatch story and photo; The Times of Clay Center; Atchison (Kansas) Daily Globe; markers at Lincoln Cemetery in Clay Center; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; Census. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.