FRANK C. GRAHAM, LT, USN

Frank Graham '36

Date of birth: October 12, 1912

Date of death: November 13, 1942

Age: 30

Lucky Bag

From the 1936 Lucky Bag:

Frank Campbell Graham

Wytheville, Virginia

"Frank"

Frank, a true Virginian patriot and gentleman, had lived all his life, prior to his four year sojourn in Annapolis, in his beloved southwest Virginia hills. He is a true friend, easy to know and get along with. The academic departments have worried him considerably, but you can't down a good man, and he has always come out on top in his brilliant victories in Dago and math. During plebe year he tried football, but gave it up until our last two years when he played on the class teams. Concerning his relations with the fair sex, Frank is not a snake, but he is by no means a red mike, and usually attends all the hops. We'll close by wishing him the best of luck always, and we can be sure he'll have it in Uncle Sam's navy.

Class Football 2; Lucky Bag; Two Stripes

Frank Campbell Graham

Wytheville, Virginia

"Frank"

Frank, a true Virginian patriot and gentleman, had lived all his life, prior to his four year sojourn in Annapolis, in his beloved southwest Virginia hills. He is a true friend, easy to know and get along with. The academic departments have worried him considerably, but you can't down a good man, and he has always come out on top in his brilliant victories in Dago and math. During plebe year he tried football, but gave it up until our last two years when he played on the class teams. Concerning his relations with the fair sex, Frank is not a snake, but he is by no means a red mike, and usually attends all the hops. We'll close by wishing him the best of luck always, and we can be sure he'll have it in Uncle Sam's navy.

Class Football 2; Lucky Bag; Two Stripes

Loss

Frank was lost when USS Juneau (CL 52) was sunk during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on November 13, 1942.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz: "His father was James, a bank cashier, mother Mary Lou, and brother James, Jr."

From the Class of 1936's "Golden Lucky Bag," published in 1986 (via Marianne Bradley, daughter of LCDR John Ellis '36, USN (Ret.)):

Mrs. Edward E. (Marion) Hoffman
1830 Avenido del Mundo, Apt. 308
Coronado, California 92118
At graduation, Frank was ordered to the battleship West Virginia where he served two years. In June 1938, while on home leave in Wytheville, West Virginia, he married Marion Howe Umberger, and shortly thereafter sailed for Manila, Philippine Islands, to join the destroyer Bulmer, an old four-piper that had been a part of the Asiatic Fleet since 1925. During the next three years, Frank saw much action on the coast of China at a time when the Japanese conquest of that area created "incidents" requiring the presence of U.S. ships to protect American lives and property.
In the fall of 1941, Frank received orders, along with his classmate, Ted Lyster, to the new cruiser Juneau, then under construction in Kearney, New Jersey. The ship was commissioned shortly after Pearl Harbor and engaged in escort and patrol duty in the Atlantic and Caribbean until August 1942, when the critical situation in the South Pacific required more ships from the Atlantic.
In September 1942, Juneau was off Guadalcanal in a task force holding off Japanese reinforcements to the island. In the next two months, Frank fought in the fiercest battles of the war in which his ship repelled air strikes and shot down many planes. The end came in the naval battle for Guadalcanal in late 1942. On 12 November, after repelling an attack and splashing six torpedo planes, Juneau sailed with four cruisers and nine destroyers to search for a large Japanese task force steaming toward Guadalcanal. Early on 13 November 1942, the two forces clashed. After her guns helped to sink a Japanese destroyer, Juneau was struck by a torpedo which slowed her speed to 13 knots. Later that morning she was hit by a second torpedo which struck on the port side near the previous hit. Observers saw a tremendous explosion and the ship sank in twenty seconds with a loss of almost 700 officers and men. Only ten men survived.
Frank is survived by his widow, Marion, who is now married to his classmate, Ed Hoffman.

His wife was listed as next of kin. He has a memory marker in Virginia.

Navy Directories & Officer Registers

The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.

The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.

The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together, or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.