MUS2c Wayne Lynn Bandy

Wayne Lynn Bandy sang and played the cornet in the U.S.S. Arizona band. He and all 20 other bandmates were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“He sang like an angel,” his sister-in-law, Marjorie Bandy, wrote in 2016.

Mr. Bandy was born Oct. 14, 1920, in Cotton County, Oklahoma south of the capital near Texas to homemaker Mattie May Bandy and the Rev. John Livingston Bandy, a Baptist minister. As late as April 1935 the family lived in Oklahoma City, but then moved to the father’s hometown in Missouri.

Their son graduated in 1939 from Waynesville High School in Waynesville, population 468, in the Ozarks south of Jefferson City. The 1940 census shows him working as a laborer for the highway department. He enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 9, 1940, and was a musician and petty officer second class at the time of his death. Bandmates nicknamed him “Buck.”

A niece, Kathryn Boone, said the reverend Bandy preached that Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, at First Baptist Church and then heard about the attack. “He preached again that night, not knowing at that point whether or not his son was alive or dead.” she told Martha Yoshida, who wrote an article about Mr. Bandy on the 75th anniversary of the attack.

A baseball field in Waynesville is named in Mr. Bandy’s honor. There is a cenotaph for him at the Waynesville Cemetery, where his parents are buried

Sources: The Houston Herald of Houston, Missouri; US Census; Martha Yoshida for the Army at Fort Leonard Wood; Waynesville Daily Guide; WWII registration card; grave marker; “At ‘Em Arizona,” the ship’s newspaper. Navy photo. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.