thedrifter
08-25-09, 08:41 AM
Aug. 25, 2009
Pearl Harbor hero Ray Turpin dies
Marine helped save five from sinking ship
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
World War II Marine veteran Ray Turpin, who was one of the last survivors involved in a heroic rescue after the USS Oklahoma capsized at Pearl Harbor, died Friday at a local hospital, his family said.
He was 88 and had lived in Las Vegas for 43 years.
He suffered a stroke in April and never fully recovered, said his daughter Pamela Tibbits.
"He was always strong to the very end," Tibbits said Monday. "I can tell you, he loved this country and his family."
As a young Marine, Turpin was on the USS Oklahoma when Japanese warplanes attacked it with torpedoes on Dec. 7, 1941.
He escaped by scaling a rope hand-over-hand between the Oklahoma and the USS Maryland on Battleship Row after he pulled five sailors to safety from a porthole as the Oklahoma listed and the ship's chaplain, Father Aloysius Schmitt, hoisted them from below.
Schmitt helped a dozen men through the porthole, including the five Turpin grabbed from his position on the outside. Schmitt was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps medal posthumously. In all, 429 from the Oklahoma died in the attack.
"You feel so helpless, you know. All young guys. The life they never had a chance to live. Just beginning. And I came so close to being one of them," Turpin told the Review-Journal in an interview at his Las Vegas home in December.
He recalled how he tried to save Schmitt, the first chaplain of any faith to die in World War II.
"I was looking in his eyes and he said, 'I've already tried. I can't get out.' And I offered him my hand. I said, 'I'll try and pull you out,'" Turpin said in December.
"He walked away and he said, 'I'm going to look around and see if there are any more guys that I can help get out of here.' So I waited a few minutes. He never came back. I never saw him again," he said.
There were a lot of heroes that day, Turpin said.
Before he could reach the safety of the USS Maryland by scaling a 3-inch-diameter line -- "I was hanging under it like a rat," -- sailors on the Maryland were ordered to chop the line with a fire axe to keep it from sinking with the Oklahoma.
This sent Turpin splashing into the oil-slicked water. "I had a hard time figuring out which way was up," he said. "I finally popped up and there was a sailor in the water who was a good swimmer. I told him I wasn't a very good swimmer. So he helped me over to the Maryland."
Turpin went on to serve through the end of the war and the occupation of Japan, leaving the Marine Corps as a first sergeant in December 1960. That was more than 20 years after he first joined the Corps in Salt Lake City.
His military career included service with the Marines in the Korean War. During the Vietnam War, he was a civilian employee deployed with the Air Force in Thailand.
He lived in Columbus, Ohio, for a while. He and his wife Wanda moved to Las Vegas in 1966 so he could work as a civilian on the F-111 project at Nellis Air Force Base.
"During the Vietnam War, as a federal employee, he deployed 'on duty' once more when the Air Force temporarily sent the F-111 to war, flying night, low-level bombing missions into North Vietnam using terrain-following radar," military historian Bill McWilliams wrote about Turpin in a short story, "The Chaplain and the Marine Private."
Raymond John Turpin was born June 4, 1921 in Waterloo, Ala. He was one of 10 children from a poor family with no power for refrigeration, "so they would keep things cold by putting them in the creek behind their home," said his granddaughter, Jennifer Vaughan.
"He was everything to me," she said. "He was my hero. He represented all the good things about men to me. He was strong. He loved his family."
Tibbits said her father always said, "'A coward dies a thousand times and I will only die once.' Nobody could intimidate him," she said.
"He had so much integrity. He was strict but he had a heart of gold. We were raised like little soldiers. Semper Fi," she said.
He is survived by his wife Wanda, daughters Pamela Tibbits and Raye Jean Plehn, and son Raymond Turpin Jr., all of Las Vegas. He is also survived by 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
A viewing will be held from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday at Palm Mortuary, 7600 S. Eastern Ave. A memorial service will follow at 5 p.m. He will be buried with full military honors at 10:40 a.m. Thursday, at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
Ellie
Pearl Harbor hero Ray Turpin dies
Marine helped save five from sinking ship
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
World War II Marine veteran Ray Turpin, who was one of the last survivors involved in a heroic rescue after the USS Oklahoma capsized at Pearl Harbor, died Friday at a local hospital, his family said.
He was 88 and had lived in Las Vegas for 43 years.
He suffered a stroke in April and never fully recovered, said his daughter Pamela Tibbits.
"He was always strong to the very end," Tibbits said Monday. "I can tell you, he loved this country and his family."
As a young Marine, Turpin was on the USS Oklahoma when Japanese warplanes attacked it with torpedoes on Dec. 7, 1941.
He escaped by scaling a rope hand-over-hand between the Oklahoma and the USS Maryland on Battleship Row after he pulled five sailors to safety from a porthole as the Oklahoma listed and the ship's chaplain, Father Aloysius Schmitt, hoisted them from below.
Schmitt helped a dozen men through the porthole, including the five Turpin grabbed from his position on the outside. Schmitt was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps medal posthumously. In all, 429 from the Oklahoma died in the attack.
"You feel so helpless, you know. All young guys. The life they never had a chance to live. Just beginning. And I came so close to being one of them," Turpin told the Review-Journal in an interview at his Las Vegas home in December.
He recalled how he tried to save Schmitt, the first chaplain of any faith to die in World War II.
"I was looking in his eyes and he said, 'I've already tried. I can't get out.' And I offered him my hand. I said, 'I'll try and pull you out,'" Turpin said in December.
"He walked away and he said, 'I'm going to look around and see if there are any more guys that I can help get out of here.' So I waited a few minutes. He never came back. I never saw him again," he said.
There were a lot of heroes that day, Turpin said.
Before he could reach the safety of the USS Maryland by scaling a 3-inch-diameter line -- "I was hanging under it like a rat," -- sailors on the Maryland were ordered to chop the line with a fire axe to keep it from sinking with the Oklahoma.
This sent Turpin splashing into the oil-slicked water. "I had a hard time figuring out which way was up," he said. "I finally popped up and there was a sailor in the water who was a good swimmer. I told him I wasn't a very good swimmer. So he helped me over to the Maryland."
Turpin went on to serve through the end of the war and the occupation of Japan, leaving the Marine Corps as a first sergeant in December 1960. That was more than 20 years after he first joined the Corps in Salt Lake City.
His military career included service with the Marines in the Korean War. During the Vietnam War, he was a civilian employee deployed with the Air Force in Thailand.
He lived in Columbus, Ohio, for a while. He and his wife Wanda moved to Las Vegas in 1966 so he could work as a civilian on the F-111 project at Nellis Air Force Base.
"During the Vietnam War, as a federal employee, he deployed 'on duty' once more when the Air Force temporarily sent the F-111 to war, flying night, low-level bombing missions into North Vietnam using terrain-following radar," military historian Bill McWilliams wrote about Turpin in a short story, "The Chaplain and the Marine Private."
Raymond John Turpin was born June 4, 1921 in Waterloo, Ala. He was one of 10 children from a poor family with no power for refrigeration, "so they would keep things cold by putting them in the creek behind their home," said his granddaughter, Jennifer Vaughan.
"He was everything to me," she said. "He was my hero. He represented all the good things about men to me. He was strong. He loved his family."
Tibbits said her father always said, "'A coward dies a thousand times and I will only die once.' Nobody could intimidate him," she said.
"He had so much integrity. He was strict but he had a heart of gold. We were raised like little soldiers. Semper Fi," she said.
He is survived by his wife Wanda, daughters Pamela Tibbits and Raye Jean Plehn, and son Raymond Turpin Jr., all of Las Vegas. He is also survived by 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
A viewing will be held from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday at Palm Mortuary, 7600 S. Eastern Ave. A memorial service will follow at 5 p.m. He will be buried with full military honors at 10:40 a.m. Thursday, at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
Ellie