Edward H Curtiss Memorial Service

December 14, 2018 - South Tulsa Baptist Church

The Memorial Service for Edward H Curtiss was a wonderful celebration of a life well lived. 

Edward H. Curtiss  1924 – 2018 by Jeffrey S. Curtiss

Of all the things that I could say today about my dad, I want to say that my prayer is that I finish my life as well as he finished his.

I knew him from July of 1953 until a week ago Tuesday, but his life began in 1924, three decades before mine.

He was the only son of a single mom who was widowed when he was just an infant.

She raised him and his three older sisters, the youngest of whom was 12 years his senior, during the great depression years of the 1930’s.

During those difficult years his mom baked and sold cakes and pies out of their home to help support the family.

As a child, the most influential men in his life were his brothers-in-law, particularly Elvin Drake the husband of his Sister, Ethaline. Elvin was 21 years older than my dad.

As a youngster, Dad spent his after-school hours and weekends working in a gas station owned by a cousin, and he spent many of his summers working as a counselor at the Big Bear Boys Camp in Big Bear Lake, California where his brother-in-law, Elvin was a director.

His early life and his teen years weren’t all that much different or outstanding from any other young person of his time or even of our day.

However, in the summer of 1942 at the age of 18 my dad went to war in answer to this nation’s call. He fought alongside the hosts of young men and women that now comprise what we call, “The Greatest Generation”.

His tour of duty in the war was spent aboard a destroyer escort, guarding convoys of supply and troop-bearing ships as they transited the Atlantic Ocean between the U.S., Europe, and Africa. When not on convoy duty his ship’s assignment was to hunt German submarines up and down the east coast and in the Caribbean Sea.

When the war in Europe ended, he was reassigned to a destroyer in the Pacific Theater where they saw no combat action but took part in the first atmospheric tests of the newest and deadliest weapons ever developed my man. My dad was an eyewitness to four atom-bomb tests at the Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls as a participant in Operation Crossroads.

He had had an interesting and adventurous life, but in 1948 his life took a dramatic turn.

My dad entered the Navy as an idealistic high school graduate of 18. Six years later he was a battle-tested, world-traveled sailor. In those six years he had been tested as only the military and war can test a young man. During his service with the Navy he had seen man and nature at their best, and at their absolute worst.

Having personally served in the Navy I understand that military life in a time of war can shape your worldview into something a bit more jaded than most people’s, but when my dad heard the salvation message, and the story of Jesus Christ, he re-set the course of his life toward Jesus and never looked back.

Of all the great stories my father told us as we grew up, none were told with as much heart and enthusiasm as when he related the change in his life between the night, he asked Jesus Christ to be his Lord, and the next morning when he awoke to an entirely new and vibrant world. My dad was radically saved. II Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. My dad experienced that change and it thrilled him.

From the day he was saved until his last trip to the hospital, my dad was a voracious, ardent, insatiable student of Bible; always learning, always seeking; but he also put what he learned into practice. If you knew my dad for even the shortest time you knew that he was a follower of Jesus Christ. You knew that by the way he treated people, and because very soon after he met someone, he would ask them if they knew Jesus too. If they didn’t, he would make sure that they heard the story of Jesus and what Jesus meant to him, and what Jesus has done for them.

My dad loved people, he was a people person. It didn’t matter if you were a follower of Christ or not, his home; our home was always open to folks he met along life’s way.

A number of the people sitting here in these pews were young adults that my dad and mom met and folded into our family. Attorneys, accountants, flight attendants, artists, secretaries, musicians, air traffic controllers, foreign exchange students; they run the gamut, and some, now as many as four decades later, are still considered a part of our  family. And the ones who are family to us share our common bond of faith in Jesus Christ. Some of them share that bond because of the testimony of my father and mom, and the love of Jesus that flowed, and flows, through them.

You, know, I don’t recall ever hearing my dad refer to himself as a member of any denomination, or even as a Christian. If asked, he would tell you what church he attended, but my dad always told people that he belonged to Jesus Christ. That was his identity. Dad was a lot of things; Husband, friend, father, engineer, WWII veteran, wood worker, award-winning photographer, hunter, fisherman, outstanding grandfather, and great grandfather, but he found his purpose and his significance, in his Savior and everything about him flowed from that.

My father was a wonderful man but he was not without his faults. When you spend a lifetime with someone you see those faults, but when you know that this person loves you without condition those things about them that may be irritating, or quirky, or even funny don’t really matter, and matter even less with the passing of time, as you watch them run their race with patience, and in rock-solid faith that God is indeed working all things together for good to those who love Him and belong to Him, and are called according to His purpose.

When I look at the whole of my father’s life, I can clearly see the hand of God accomplishing His perfect work through the use of an imperfect, but wholly committed man.

I could tell you lots of very funny and great stories about my father, Edward H. Curtiss, but my purpose today is to honor him for who he was as his core.  His achievements and accomplishments are many; some of them are significant on a very grand scale, but I think that I can best honor him by telling you what I know he would want you to know about him.

In summer of 1948, in San Diego, California, just before he was honorably discharged from his service to his country, my dad said yes to Jesus, and then began to discover the simple and unalterable truth of the faithfulness of God and the rock-solid truth of His word.

I want to leave you with three short passages that I know my dad would give to you if he were standing here in my place instead of me in his. The first is, in a very real sense the key that can, if you choose to use it, unlock every one of life’s door you ever encounter.

Psalm 37:3, Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart. My dad wisely took God up on that offer and found it to be true. By the way, that word, delight, means to get to know God like someone with whom you find yourself falling in love, because you will fall in love with Him. My dad loved God with all his heart.

The second is from the book of Proverbs, chapter 3, verses 5 and 6.

Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and don’t depend on your own ability to understand. Do everything as though He was standing right beside you, and He will direct your pathway.

The third is a pair of verses that my dad often prayed back to God during his last days. They are from Psalm 73, verses 25 and 26.

²⁵ Whom have I in heaven but You?
And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.
²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:25-26. That was his testimony during the worst of his last days.

We miss Dad terribly. We are grieving, but not without hope. We are feeling the pain of separation but not of loss, because we know that my dad is more alive today than he has ever been, and that we are going to see him again, maybe soon – who knows.

Allow me to leave you with this, the words of Job, a man of incredible faith; who knew unbelievable suffering but never lost his faith.

Here is what he had to say in the midst of his incredible pain and loss. He spoke of the future, bodily resurrection to eternal life, of everyone that places their hope and trust in God and His son Jesus Christ.

²⁵ “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
²⁶ “Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall see God;
²⁷ Whom I myself shall behold,
And whom my eyes will see, and not another. Job 19:25-27

That is how my dad lived his life, knowing that his Redeemer lives. And I know that it is a hope that he, and we would love to share with each of you.

On behalf of myself and my family; we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for coming here today to honor my father.

The front and inside of the Memorial Card / handout given to the friends and family who attended the Memorial Service.

This is the Video of the Military Honor Guard who volunteered to Honor Edward H. Curtiss for his 6 year service during WWII. 

Edward H. Curtiss - Navy History Part 2

Bikini Experience

December 15, 1947 - USS PASIG AW-3

On the way to the atoll we made a brief stop at the island of Roi. I have no conformation of the name but it is what we were told. We came to a stop and were soon joined by a smaller cargo type vessel. The big black box was off loaded onto this ship along with the security marine group. We then proceeded to Bikini, took up our assigned station and dropped anchor. The next morning ( July 26 ) we got underway and took up patrol station among all the rest of this operations ships. I cannot remember how many ships were anchored in the test area but there were a lot of them. All doomed to be sacrificed to further our country’s need to know the effectiveness of the bomb on ships at sea. The German battleship Prinz Eugen ( pronounced Yoygen) which was captured during WWII and our old retired aircraft carrier Yorktown.

We were all very nervous about this test. Thinking about the radioactivity and the force of the blast but here we were determined to make the best of it come-what-may. My normal sea detail was in the forward engine room but when the captain requested anyone that could draw sketches of the explosion should “lay up”to the bridge. This was to be an opportunity of a lifetime that I was not about to miss so up to the bridge I went. I was handed a sketch pad , a pencil and a pair of special dark glasses to protect the eyes from the intensity of the blast. When the bomb exploded it was so fascinating it took me a few minutes to get to working on the sketches but I did. They were good enough to be entered into Naval records and I got a thank you letter from the Admiral in charge of this operation. Believe me it was an unforgettable experience.

Helen Francis "Babe" (Curtiss) Conner

9 May 1912 – 14 May 2014

Helen Frances “Babe” Conner was born May 9, 1912 in Omaha, Nebraska. 

Her father was Arthur Darby Curtiss and mother Lata LaVesta Launder. Her father was a florist who did landscaping work and worked in greenhouses. 

Helen was the third child with two older sisters, Ethelyne N. Drake and Ruby L. Grandfield, both now deceased. 

In the early 1920s the family moved to Los Angeles and lived on Idaho Avenue. In 1924 Helen’s brother Edward H., whom many of you know, was born. Ed would go on to marry Helen Tollefson – and the sisters- in-law were very close friends. Sadly, Arthur Curtiss never knew his son because Arthur was in the hospital from early 1924 to mid 1925, when he died. Helen was 12 years old. 

In 1929 Ethelyne married Elvin “Ducky” Drake who was a beloved figure in UCLA athletics for his entire career – Drake Stadium was later named after him, and the players loved him. 

 

Everyone had a nickname in this family. Ruby was called “Sis”; Lauren, Ruby’s husband, was called “Red”; you heard about “Ducky”; Ed was and is called “Bud”; of course there was “Babe”.

Babe graduated from University High School. She was  in its first graduating class. She was

extremely social and had some wonderful friends. They started a high school philanthropy club called Cosmos. She graduated right around the time of the Great Depression, and after graduation, Helen worked at the Tivoli Theater on Santa Monica Blvd for 25 cents per day. 

She met her husband John Wesley Conner who of course had a nickname – he was called “Wes” - and they were married in 1931. Both ended up working for Tucker McClure, Corporation which was a General Contracting business. Wes was an electrician and Helen was an excellent secretary who was an expert in short hand. During this time, even though World War II had not started yet, Tucker McClure was building military bases, and there was a lot of military activity going on in Ecuador. Helen and Wes transferred to the jungles of Ecuador around 1933 and they would live there for almost a decade.  

Interestingly enough, the doctors had told them they would not be able to have children, and for quite some time they didn’t. But in 1943 they decided to leave Ecuador to have their first child, John, here in the United States.  Helen was VERY pregnant. On the way home from Ecuador, their plane actually crashed in Mexico because of a landing gear failure. Amazingly, no one was hurt, but there was still this little matter of getting to Los Angeles to have their baby. Fortunately, they got here just in time. 

Wes and Helen ended up having two children – John Arthur born in 1943 and David O. born about a year and half later. The doctors were wrong.  John is married to Patricia Johnson and David is married to Jill Fry. 

While back in Los Angeles, Helen continued working for Tucker McClure as executive secretary. She used to ride the red car trolley from Venice Blvd to downtown LA, where she handled the company payroll. She always made sure her kids had their lunches packed before school, and would send the kids to school before she headed off to work.  

In 1960 Tucker McClure the owner of the business, passed away, and his son Allan took over. Allan ended up closing down the business and Helen helped with that process. Allan was also really into astronomy, and Helen helped him get some of his work published. He gave Helen and Wes a telescope, and this became one of her hobbies and interests. 

However, the closing of the business meant Helen needed a new job, and so she became the executive secretary for the California State University Chancellor’s Office, from 1960 to 1974. She worked for the President of the Council.  

She finally retired in 1974, age 62.  

She and Wes’s life in retirement was extremely enjoyable. She had a lot of friends, and she was still friends with some people from Uni High School, in fact the Cosmos philanthropy club kept going up until the 1970s. They met once a month. She and Wes were also involved in a club called the Huff and Puffs which was a square dancing club. They were part of a poker club, and she was a member of the philanthropy club called PEO International.

Helen and Wes traveled all over the world including Germany, England, Australia, Ireland, they even went to China in the 1970s which was pretty much unheard of. Their favorite place was Italy. They were both healthy and able to enjoy clubs, social events and they loved having the family, including their sons, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters Samantha, Cassandra, and Alexandra, and extended family over for family dinners. Babe hosted nearly every wedding shower, baby shower, anniversary party and many birthdays for the family. 

They were blessed with good health and a fun retirement together which they enjoyed until the 1990s, when Wes Conner died in 1994 at age 87. 

Helen was a member of the West LA Methodist Church on Butler Ave, then University Bible Church on Wilshire Blvd. In the few years I knew her, she asked me to call her Helen, I think she thought it wasn’t good for the pastor to call her Babe. 

The biggest spiritual influence in her life was Community Bible Study. Helen Curtiss first invited Babe to join in the late 1970s, and she really enjoyed it. Over time, her understanding of the Bible grew and she began talking more and more about the Lord Jesus as her Savior. She was faithful in doing her lessons and homework. After a while, she was asked to serve in the leadership group, as Dottie Larson’s transcriber in shorthand, which she did even into her 90s. She would type up her notes and send them to Dottie, and those teachings would end up all over the country. Babe loved the women of CBS and it made a huge impact on her life. The other CBS women really loved her, too.

In her last years, Helen was eager to go be with the Lord in heaven. Sometimes she would wake up in the morning and say “Oh darn, I’m still here.” She had no doubts about where she would spend eternity, not because she was a good person but because she had faith in God’s Word, that whoever truly calls upon and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. Well, she’s finally there. 

Her Memorial Celebration was held at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California May 28, 2014. 

 

Eulogy by Rev. Rob Brooks, University Bible Church

Edward H. Curtiss EM2/c USN

October 16, 1942. Swearing in ceremony on the steps of the Los Angeles City Hall.

We then traveled by bus to the Naval Training Station in San Diego California and started “boot camp” by removing all or civilian clothing, which the Navy mailed to our homes. All our hair was removed and we received several shots. We got a sea bag and a whole outfit of navy clothing and gear including a mattress, hammock, towels, toiletries and puttees for our ankles which identified us as “boots”. We were fed a cold meal and told to hit the sack. It was about 2000 hours (8PM).

I will never forget that first night laying there in that bunk which was fine with me because I had spent every summer since I was 12 years old in summer camp and slept on cot type bunks just like these. All around the room I could hear whimpering, moaning, outright sobbing from some individuals that sincerely wished they were back in bed at home and had never even heard of the navy.

At 0400 hours we were rousted by the nastiness, meanest, loudmouthed chief petty officer in the world and mustered on the grinder. We were marched in parade order until 0500 then directed to the mess hall for breakfast. The entire day every day for 3 weeks was spent training for the various situations to be faced aboard ship including survivor skills, first aid and damage control. After 3 weeks we were tested to determine what type of jobs we were best suited for to perform aboard ship. I was sent to electrical school which lasted 16 weeks. This made me very happy. I knew this was my niche and I would become a good electrician.

The war was going on and we knew it wouldn’t be long before we would be assigned to a ship and headed out to sea. I could hardly wait. All during my youth my primary interest in books and reading was of sea stories. I spent every hour I could on a boat no matter what kind. If it could float I wanted to be on it.

After graduating from electrical school we were ordered to report for duty at the destroyer base in San Diego, where I was assigned to the USS Edgar G. Chase (DE16) Destroyer Escort. A destroyer escort is designed specifically to hunt and kill submarines in its effort to protect convoys of helpless freighters and tanker ships. It is also equipped with anti aircraft weapons.

The ‘Eddy G’ as we dubbed her was brand new. She had been built and outfitted at the Vallejo naval shipyard near San Francisco. The crew already aboard was almost all new to the navy. Some had been aboard ship before but not many. The trip down from San Francisco showed up a lot of problems so it was really important to get into the ‘Shake-down’ cruise and get us all trained before we had to face battle conditions. We spent every hour, day and night in intensive training. We knew how important this period was and made the extra effort to be the best ship in our squadron. Strangely there was very little complaining or griping from the crew during this time.

We went down the coast to Panama, went through the canal and out into the Caribbean Sea then on to Hamilton, Bermuda. We operated out of Hamilton for about three weeks then up to Charleston SC for some revisions to the ship. We slipped in there on July 21, 1943 which just happened to be my 19^th birthday. We were then assigned to Miami Florida to patrol the coast and train brand new, 90 day wonder officers just starting their naval careers. During this time we had two encounters with German subs but no surface action. We dropped a lot of depth charges and were pretty sure of one kill but couldn’t prove it. No bodies or other hard evidence came to the surface. It was pretty exciting for a while. There was a lot of activity on our ship which lasted from about 2100 hours to just after dawn. But no cheers for a confirmed kill.

We spent a little over a year operating like this out of Miami when we got the call to escort a “baby” flat-top (undersized aircraft carrier) to Recife, Brazil. She was going down to relieve a sister ship that had been operating in that area for a full year patrolling the south Atlantic. On the way down we crossed the equator and spent a whole day initiating all us ‘Pollywogs’ into ‘Shellbacks’. On another day we had a torpedo from a German sub pass just ahead of our bow and just aft of the stern of the flat top. One of the ships in our escort group the USS O’Toole made contact and started dropping depth charges. We never did make a contact so our skipper just stood by ready to assist the O’Toole. She threw every depth charge she had aboard with no results and even asked us to step in and throw what we had but our skipper was so angry at this futile effort that he just said ‘no’ and went back into our assigned escort position. For ever after that, every time our skipper saw the O’Toole he would mutter “Damn the O’Toole”. I’m sure if he were alive today he would still be saying it.

In early August 1944, we were directed to report to New York. We anchored just a little ways off from the statue of liberty and swung with the tides until the skipper was ordered to proceed to Brooklyn navy yard and provision for 60 days. We knew something was up and we were excited to find out. We were informed a hurricane was headed for the coast and to make preparations to ride it out at the dock. We didn’t get the chance. We left port and headed out toward the gulf stream. To say the ocean was rough doesn’t even begin to describe the conditions we were headed into. The seas were running to 30 feet in height and a man could not walk the deck but had to make way through inside passages to go anywhere in the ship. We were assigned to escort a convoy of tugs towing barges to England. This group was called “convoy NY119”. Top speed of this gay little group would be 6 knots. The tugs were of sea going capability but the conditions of the sea far exceeded their design. They were pulling huge railroad type barges. We had no clue to the nightmare we were heading into. We wondered why it was so important to go out into such dangerous conditions with a bunch of rusty old railroad barges. We found out later that these barges were to be filled with sand and sunk near the coast of Normandy, France providing quickly ready-made docks for the ships involved in the Normandy invasion.

The waves kept building and were being measured at 65 feet. This is heavy seas for a large full sized battleship but for our little pint sized DE it was daunting. Then you think of the little, and I do mean little tugs it was just about impossible to cope. After two weeks of this punishment tugs began to capsize and it was literally impossible to help them when they did. The barges were such a drag due to their size and weight that when a wave would overtake a tug he couldn’t rise to go over it and would be twisted over in the effort and capsize. We lost 42 men in this way.

This operation was of such magnitude that it has been recorded in several books. The two that I have read are “Tempest, Fire & Foe” by Lewis M. Andrews (page 34) Also there are two pictures of me (pages 41 and 390). The 2^nd. Book is Shepherds of the Sea by Robert F. Cross.

The return trip to New York was uneventful except the sea was still storm-tossed all the way to Norfolk where we dropped off the tankers we had been escorting from Plymouth, England.

After a few days rest we provisioned for sea and shepherded several tankers to Oran, Morocco. Spent 10 days in port then took them all back to the USA. We repeated this operation two more times over the next few months.

By this time the war was winding down. With no more convoys to escort we returned to Miami, Florida and patrolled the coast in and out of the Gulf of Mexico. The day the war ended we were patrolling along the over-seas highway. We could see cars driving along. The captain announced over the growler that the war had ended, and then ordered all deck guns to commence firing into the air. People on the highway were stopping and hiding under and behind their cars wondering what was happening. We steamed on back to Miami where crowds of people were systematically destroying the town breaking windows, burning and turning over cars and street-cars in their joy.

Shortly after this we were assigned to report to the Navy yard at Charleston, South Carolina decommission the Eddie G. and move all our gear to shore facilities. Most of the crew was mustered out and sent home but I was regular Navy with 3 years to finish out my 6 year hitch. Late in October I was reassigned to Norfolk, VA to wait for new orders. On December 24^th I was given orders to go on ‘30 day delayed orders’ and report for duty on USS Lowry, DD770. Christmas day was spent on the train going to LA and home.

I was having a very difficult time trying to deal with being separated from the Chase and all the guys I had been so close to for two and a half years. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for that amount of time you get very closely attached and it is hard to make the break, but I was looking forward to serving on the Lowry a full blown warship covered with glory and the battle scars to prove it.

Edward H. Curtiss at Big Bear Boys Camp

Edward H. Curtiss was fortunate to be able to go to the Big Bear Boys Camp in Big Bear Lake, California when he was a boy. His Sister Ethelyne N. (Curtiss) Drake was married to Elvin C. "Ducky" Drake who was associated with the Big Bear Boys Camp (BBBC) in the San Bernardino Mountains for many years. At that time the city of Big Bear Lake was called Pine Knot.
Every summer from the age of 8 years until he graduated from University High School in Los Angeles, Edward would go along with Ducky to attend the camp for the summer. When he was old enough he participated as a counsellor. Most of the other boys were from the wealthy families in the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.

Photo: Edward Curtiss (R) & Harold Witherbee 1939

The following brochure is from the 1930's.

Here is the Brochure for Big Bear Boys Camp

The camp is still there but it is owned by the Presbyterian Church and called Camp TANDA on Lake View Drive.