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Harold B. Phelps 1893-1989
Navy Telegrapher WWI and Radioman WWII
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| USN Radioman "Skinny" Phelps in 1926 |
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| USN Lt. Harold B. "Bart" Phelps (Ret.) in 1973 |
My great-grandparents Thadeus (1856-1932) and Helen Phelps moved their family, including their three daughters and my grandfather Harold Bartle Phelps (1893-1984), from Peoria, Illinois to Los Angeles in 1899. Helen died in 1902, leaving Thadeus to raise four children: Bart 8, Mildred 10, Blanche 12, and Helen 17. While in the Los Angeles area, the family moved several times around Los Angeles County.
In 1910 at age 17, Bart got a job as telegraph clerk for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad in Winslow, Arizona. He worked there until 1914. He was paid about $95 per month. Bart soon had enough of trying to sleep days in the Arizona heat.
Bart read Jack London's books like Call of the Wild and White Fang and, hoping to get his own adventure, enlisted in the Navy on November 4, 1914. The pay rate was $17.60 per month. "Skinny" (his nickname while in the Navy) spent WWI in Honolulu and on various ships around the world, including posts in the Pacific, including Hawaii, Alaska, San Francisco, the Philippines, New Guinea, and Bremerton, Washington.
In early 1919 while assigned to the Yerba Buena Island Radio Station in San Franciso Bay, a friend of Bart's asked a girl if if she knew a nice young lady for a double date with Bart. The four went on out to dinner where Bart met Betty Christy. In August 1919 Bart shipped out for Hawaii, where he was assigned to the Wailupe Radio Station from 1919 until 1922.
Eight months after Bart was transfered to Wailupe, Betty sailed on the Matson ship S. S. Manoa from San Francisco on 30 March 1920. Betty followed Bart to Hawaii, and they were married the day she arrived on June 6, 1920. No invitations were sent, only an announcement afterwards.
Following Hawaii, Bart was reassigned to San Diego, after which he got his wish, and was assigned to Alaska. After a year on Woody Island, where my father Harold Bartle "Hal" Phelps Jr. was born. They returned to San Diego, followed by a year each in Samoa, Oregon, Cuba, and Arizona--the state whose heat had inspired Bart to join the Navy in the first place.
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My grandfather Bart Phelps was a telegrapher in World War I and radioman in World War II. He saw the world while in the Navy. He wrote a detailed history of Pacific Navy Communications on Yerba Buena Island from 1916-1919; spent a year on Woody Island (population 100) in 1925 near Kodiak; and wrote about his adventures and misadventures during 1926-27 as a radioman on Wailupe, Hawaii. |
While serving in the U. S. Navy, the family moved from Pago Pago, Samoa to San Francisco from December 27, 1929 to January 30, 1930, aboard the SS Sierra, destined for her mother and father's apartment at 525 Turk St. in San Francisco. He had long desired to see something of Alaska, and was finally able to realize his dream when he was assigned to a radio station in Ketchikan, although events quickly took an unexpected turn.
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| S.S. Manoa was an American freight and passenger steamer that sailed for the Matson Line from San Francisco to Hawaii. |
In 1937, Bart retired from the U.S. Navy and the family returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Betty's folks lived. They purchased a lot in San Mateo on the site of the old horse track, at 303 Seville Way. They had a 2 bedroom, 1 bath split-level Mediterranean style home with Spanish tile roof house built for $7000.
Bart got a job as a property assessor with the county. In 1939 he was called back to active duty as a radioman. He was serving on New Guinea during Christmas 1944. He spent most of World War II in Hawaii and San Francisco. After retiring the second time from the military in 1946, he returned to work for San Mateo County as a property assessor. Betty managed the money and had the house paid off within about 5 years. Bart worked for the county until he retired in about 1965.
They lived in the same home from 1937 until his death on March 9, 1984. After his death on Bart was cremated. He did not wish (as was Betty's wish) for any memorial service. Betty did not inter his ashes for several years, until after she moved to Santa Maria, CA, to live near her son.