Lucky Bag Yearbook

From the 1924 Lucky Bag:

JOHN ELLSWORTH WYMOND

Cutie

STRAIGHT from the fertile pastures of Indiana this hardy specimen of rough and ready manhood came to us. He takes his fun where he finds it, but nevertheless that gruff exterior covers a soft and tender heart.

“Cutie” made his spoons Plebe year by easing across the corridor with a lighted skag between his teeth. Upper Classmen didn’t know what else to do about it, so they spooned on him because he was so ratey.

Should John leave the Navy, we would lose an emryo poet laureate. The only difficulty lies in the combination formed by his initials, but he certainly lived up to them as chief commissary of Mess No. Nine on Second Class cruise. He holds the Academy record in getting more for less from the sharks we met abroad. Also, he is the only living Midshipman who ever went to church twice on the same Sunday. He has had many struggles with the Academics, but always managed to fool them in the finals. “Cutie” used to take great delight in rising before reveille and going over to the Gym for a swim. His affinity for this stopped, however, after he passed his “A” test. He has no striking characteristics except as a boxer and these you can see on his hard visage above.

Loss

John was lost when USS Wasp (CV 7) was sunk by a Japanese submarine on September 15, 1942. He was a member of the supply corps.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

John graduated from Aurora High School in 1919.

After graduating from the Naval Academy, John was appointed assistant paymaster at Brooklyn, New York. He later became the Navy’s youngest pay master.

In July 1934, he was an officer aboard the USS Houston on which President Roosevelt cruised for four weeks.

John married Dorothea Budette on February 23, 1935, in Chicago, Illinois. In 1940, they lived in Norfolk.

His father Ellsworth was a farmer, and his mother was Emma.

His wife was listed as next of kin.

Navy Directories & Officer Registers

The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.

The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.

The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together, or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.