Week 14 – 2020: Water #52Ancestors

My husband and I met in 1979 when we were first-year law students at Notre Dame. As it happened, we shared a coat-locker in the basement of the law school building. Only first-years were provided lockers – I suppose they felt sorry for the shock we were about to experience and wanted something familiar around us. We didn’t know each other well that year, but I remember the big heavy coat he wore during the winter. Winters in South Bend were another shock to the system, but he had gone to ND for undergrad so was prepared. I learned later that the coat he wore was his dads from World War II.

Born 3 March 1921 in Parsons, Kansas, John Richard Baty was the second child of Lee and Kathryn McCormick.[1] Both John and his older brother Edward served in WWII – Johnny in the Navy and Eddie in the Army.  Because Johnny served in the Navy, I was able to obtain part of his service file. Side note: Army service files are almost impossible to obtain because of a fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.[2]

Johnny began his college education at Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University) in 1938. After two years there, he transferred to the University of Notre Dame.[3] When he was home in Kansas City for Christmas break in January 1942, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve V-7 program.[4] Immediately transferred to inactive duty, Johnny went on to complete his law degree at Notre Dame by August of 1942 under an accelerated program.[5] How he did that provides for an interesting side-story.

During WWII, ND fell on hard times. The student population fell dramatically; by the fall of 1941 most of the school’s upperclassmen were off to war. Continual reduction in the student body brought the school to a financial precipice and it almost closed its doors.[6] Fortunately for ND, the U.S. Navy came to the rescue when it established a V-7 Navy College Training program at the school.[7] The idea behind the program was to provide young men with a college education and train them to be officers. Johnny and about 12,000 other Notre Dame men enrolled in this program.[8] Navy paid ND almost $500,000 for its infrastructure needs and administrative expenses, thereby saving the school.[9]

After graduating from ND in August of 1942, Johnny went home to Kansas City. He was then recalled to active duty and directed to the Midshipmen’s School at Northwestern University.[10] He graduated in December 1943 and was appointed an ensign. The records I have now do not show where he was stationed in 1944 but by early 1945, he was stationed at the Willamette Iron & Steel Corporation in Portland, Oregon.[11] 

Navy records show Johnny on the muster rolls for the USS PCE-882 a “Patrol Craft Escort.” The ship was commissioned on 23 February 1945 and Johnny was part of the first crew that served aboard her, assigned to the “Combat Information Center.”[12] The PCE-882 was a weather ship and my husband remembers his dad telling him that was that since they broadcast their weather reports freely, they were never in danger of being attacked by the Japanese who also relied on those reports.

According to the biography of a machinist on the ship, they were based out of Guam. When they went out on patrol, they were assigned to a “station” 900 miles east of Guam. They would “kill one motor and run the other one at half speed, going in a large circle sending in weather information.”[13] They had enough supplies for a thirty-day stint before they returned to Guam for new supplies.[14] Johnny used to tell stories of the men shooting at sharks during patrol.

While the official military records verify my father-in-law’s story of his service in World War II there is a 4,000-mile problem. Johnny always said he was stationed in the Aleutian Islands (hence the need for the big heavy jacket my husband wore thirty years later). Yet the records clearly show he served in the South Pacific.  

Who’s surprised that a family story didn’t completely hold up fifty years later?

[1] Kansas State Board of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, birth certificate no. 250 2821 (1921), John A. Baty; Kansas Office of Vital Statistics, Topeka.

[2] “The 1973 Fire, National Personnel Records Center,” The National Archives (https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973 : accessed 3 April 2020).

[3] The Dome, 1941, “Class of 1942” (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1941), 106; “U.S, School Yearbooks, 1880-2010,” Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com). 

[4] John R. Baty Official Military personnel file, service no. 700-15-45; National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri; photocopies supplied by the Center 5 April 2012 without citation. 

[5] The Dome, 1942, “Seniors of 1942” (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1942), 62-63; “U.S, School Yearbooks, 1880-2010,” Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com).

[6] Tod Leonard, “Notre Dame football owes a huge debt to Navy,” The San Diego Union Tribune, 24 October 2018; digital image, Sandiegouniontribune.com (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/sd-sp-college-football-notre-dame-vs-navy-history-20181023-story.html : accessed 3 April 2020).

[7] Malcolm Moran, “Notre Dame, Navy friends before rivals,” Notre Dame News, 14 October 2004; digital image, University of Notre Dame (https://news.nd.edu/news/notre-dame-navy-friends-before-rivals/ : accessed 3 April 2020).

[8] Natalie Weber, “Notre Dame, Navy partnership serves as a foundation of historic series,” The Observer, 17 November 2017; digital image, ndsmcobserver.com (https://ndsmcobserver.com/2017/11/notre-dame-navy-partnership/ accessed 3 April 2020).

[9] Bryan Fitzgerald, “How Navy Saved Notre Dame after World War II – the team’s (sic) shared histories,” IrishCentral.com, 31 August 2012 (https://www.irishcentral.com/sports/how-navy-saved-notre-dame-after-world-war-ii-the-teams-shared-histories-168127246-237526071 : accessed 3 April 2020).

[10] John R. Baty Official Military personnel file.

[11] “Muster Roll of the Crew of the U.S.S. PCE-882,” dated 31 March 1945, for John R. Baty; digital images, “U.S. World War II Navy Muster Rolls, 1939-1949,” Fold3 (http://www.fold3.com : accessed 2 April 2020) ; citing Muster Rolls of the U.S. Navy Ships, Stations, and other Naval Activities, 01/01/1939-01/01/1949, NARA Identifier 594996, roll 32862_252776.

[12] Wikipedia.org, “List of U.S. Navy acronyms,” rev. 05:23, 31 March 2020.

[13] James Glynn Jordan, Lifetime of Memories (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2009), 58.

[14] Ibid.

John Richard Baty

John is third from right, top row.

USS PCE-882, Navsource.org (http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/02882.htm : accessed 13 Apr 2017); source: Mike Green.