WWII-KIA-KAY, Edward Stanley
KAY, Edward Stanley - Aviation Machinist's Mate 2nd Class US Navy. Born: 1921. Died 4 January 1944 - Missing at sea. Monument: Battery Park, New York City, NY. Found in the Hillsboro (Indiana) 1956 Yearbook, he is listed as being born July 25, 1920 - attached to a Patrol Squandron (No. 31) he died January 2 1943 (Atlantic Area) according to that source. Source: Birth Certificate agrees with the yearbook, born 25 July 1920 in Newtown, Fountain County, Indiana to Everett and Julia Phoebie Smith, their 4th child, born at 5 a.m. with Dr. W.V. Stanfield delivering him. He, too, like so many is listed on his parents stone but also has another memorial at the East Coast Memorial, Manhattan, NY.
Source: Hillsboro News January ___ 1943
What is considered as another fatality was added to the list of Hillsboro men in service in WWII when Mr. and Mrs. Everett Kay of Hillsboro, received a telegram, Monday night, January 4 in which it was stated that a navy patrol airplane with Edward Stanley Kay aviation machinist mate second class, as one of the crew was over due from a patrol flight which should have ended at 2 o'clock Sunday morning January 3. The telegram was from the commanding officer at Quanset Point, RI. It also stated that particulars would follow by letter.
The young man graduated from Hillsboro HS in the class of 1939, he being the third from the same class to have given their livesin WWII. The others were Dale Cooper of the US Navy, missing in action in the South
Pacific and Russell Harshbarger, who died of wounds received in action in North Africa on Nov 8, 1942.
Kay enlisted in the navy in April 1941. He spent 8 months in Porto Rico and 5 months in Trinidad in December he came from Elizabeth City, NC to HIllsboro on a 10 days furlough with his parents. He left on December 19
and reported to his base in Elizabeth City December 21. His parents did not know he had been transferred to Rhode Island.