Robert
Verbeten (right) and sailor
Guidroz (left) relax at Hawaii's
National Park, August 2, 1941
Courtesy
of Robert Verbeten
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Verbeten
left Combined Locks to enlist in the Navy on October 10, 1940. The
18 year old worked as a cook at a naval air station at Pearl Harbor.
He volunteered to attend radio school and became a radio man 3rd
class the next year. Verbeten served at Pearl Harbor until 1944
when the Navy transferred him to radio stations in the Admiralty
Islands and the Philippines. He left service in 1946 and worked
as a paper maker for Kimberly-Clark and MidTech until he retired
in 1983. He married Ruth Brockman and they raised four children.
Verbeten died in December 2002.
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Robert
Verbeten (right)
jokes with his sister, Ardiana (center), and brother-in-law,
Martin Van Gompel (left),
in Combined Locks,
circa 1940
Courtesy of Robert Verbeten
News
of the Pearl Harbor attack shocked the Verbeten family. Family
members waited three weeks before the Navy informed them that
Robert lived through the assault.
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