F3c Walter Karr Bolling

When Walter Karr Bolling Jr. graduated from Prestonsburg High School, the class gave him a fountain pen “to sign a peace treaty with Hitler, his life-long ambition.” That was in 1939.

He became the first man from Floyd County in east-central Kentucky to die in the war when he was killed Dec. 7, 1941, in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a fireman third class on the U.S.S. Arizona.

His father, also named Walter Karr Boling, served as a watertender on a troop transport in World War I. He made 18 cross-Atlantic trips. Walter Sr. was a miner and then a mechanic.

The son was born March 28, 1922 in Prestonsburg, population 1,700. He was the first son and second child. 

When the father died in July 1934 his death certificate spelled his last name as Boling. That’s also how his widow, Frances, signed her last name when she applied for a military headstone for her husband’s grave.

Times were hard for the family of six children after the father died. In 1939 Frances worked 40 weeks for $352 (about $7,700 in 2023 dollars). In April 1940 she was a cutter at a National Youth Association training center — a Depression-era federal jobs program. Walter worked four weeks in 1939 and earned $10 – the equivalent of about $220 in 2023.

The 1940 Census identified him as a messenger for a gasoline distributor, but none of the other children, ages 8 to 22, had jobs. When he applied to enlist in the Navy in late August 1940 he said he’d worked for 15 months as a truck driver for a distributor of refining products.

Walter signed as Bolling when he enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 15, 1940 in Louisville. He went aboard the Arizona on Dec. 9, 1941, and was a fireman third class when he died.

The VFW post in Prestonsburg is named for him. In 2016 the post started construction on the Walter Karr Bowling Veterans Emergency Housing Center to help homeless vets and those who lost homes in fire and other disasters.

Note: Navy records and the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor show Walter’s last name as Bolling. But his obituary and the VFW post spell it Bowling.

Sources: Floyd County Times; VFW post; Census; Navy muster rolls; U.S. Headstone Application for Military Veteran.  This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.