USS Arizona’s Oldest Survivor Dies At 100
” Joe Langdell was working as a junior accountant in Boston when he got the idea that he should join the Navy and go to sea. It was 1940 and America edged closer every day to joining the war that raged in Europe.
After proving his sea legs on the battleship New York, Langdell signed up. His college degree earned him a place in an officers’ training program. In March 1941, newly commissioned as an ensign, he reported for his first assignment: The USS Arizona, stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
By the end of the year, the mighty Arizona lay shattered beneath the harbor, sunk by Japanese bombers in the Dec. 7 attack that finally propelled the United States into World War II.
Langdell survived the attack at Pearl Harbor, along with 334 other Arizona crewmen, and devoted much of his later years to preserving the memory of a day that changed history.
” The lesson I’ve learned from that experience is that the 1,177 men entombed on the ship right now will never know the love of a wife or the joy of grandchildren,” he said in 2006, when his son, Ted, interviewed him on video at Pearl Harbor. “We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.”
Langdell died early Wednesday in a skilled nursing center in Yuba City, Calif. He was 100, the oldest living survivor of the Arizona. With his passing, just eight crewmen from the mighty battleship remain.”
—
YouViewed/Editorial 
Reblogged this on IdealisticRebel's Daily View of Favorites and commented:
Rest in Peace