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WT2c Victor Lawrence Jeans
Victor Lawrence “Larry” Jeans was born Aug. 23, 1918 at Eugene, Oregon. His father, Dorwin, was a mechanic, and his mother, Edith Dodd Jeans, a homemaker.
The son attended Santa Clara High School on the northside where he was an athlete and performed in the 1937 senior play, “Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick.”
Mr. Jeans enlisted in the Navy on April 11, 1938 and went aboard the U.S.S. Arizona that August. He played in the ship’s baseball team, which competed against teams from other ships.
He was a watertender and petty officer second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.
An older brother, James Lee, served in the Navy from 1937 to 1957, including on a motor torpedo boat in the Pacific during World War II. On a visit home in 1943 he told his parents, “I’m even at last for Larry.”
Sources: The Eugene (Oregon) Guard; Census; Navy muster rolls; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs death file; At ‘Em Arizona newsletter of April 6, 1940. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.