One of MY Veterans was honored as one of five Deputy Grand Marshals for our local Veterans Day Parade yesterday. Deputy Grand Marshal Hoover Lloyd Hoover grew up in Lima, Ohio during the Depression. He enlisted in the Navy at age 17 and stayed for 30 years, through World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. “When I graduated from school, there were no jobs,” said Hoover, now 88. Hoover’s first ship was a British cargo ship. He started as a gunner and later became a carpenter’s mate. Hoover was in the Pacific during WWII on the Horace A. Bass, a destroyer escort named after a pilot who was shot down in 1942 and presumed dead. The crew on the Horace A. Bass would scout islands before an invasion, looking for land mines and what the beach was like. One of the islands they surveyed was Saipan, where thousands of Americans would die in 1944 during the Battle of Saipan. The island is now a U.S. territory. Hoover was on the Horace A. Bass after the war ended. The ship entered Tokyo Bay and pulled alongside the Japanese battleship Nagato. “We took that battleship,” Hoover said. “We went on board.” After his time in the service, Hoover went into construction. He later worked for the city of Springfield as the buildings supervisor. He met his wife, Nina, in Kansas City. Hoover has his wife’s name tattooed on his left hand. They were married for 63 years. She died in 2009.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 02:47:19 +0000
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