Lucky Bag Yearbook

From the 1940 Lucky Bag:

DOLIVE DURANT, JR.

Schnoz

By these words you will know him “Did I ever tell you about” — and he is off on another story. The “Deacon,” as he is affectionately known, loves to talk — any time and on any subject. His gasping listeners doubt him at times, but it matters not to Dolive. Hailing from Alabama, he is slow to anger except about one subject — damnyankees (in one word). He is the athletic type — interested in all athletics, especially baseball, wrestling, football, and swimming. After once getting to know the “Deacon,” one can’t help but like him. He is the kind of man who will be a good officer and a true friend.

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Dolive Durant, Jr. is also listed on the page titled “And Some We Knew.” Despite being pictured in the 1940 Lucky Bag, he did not graduate. He resigned on June 1, 1939, with the note “Deficient in studies, second term’s work. Recommended to be dropped. Permitted to resign.”

Loss

Dolive was lost when his B-24D Liberator bomber went missing en route from Labrador to Iceland on October 13, 1943. All twelve crewmen aboard were lost. They were members of Bombing Squadron (VB) 111.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Dolive attended Murphy High School in 1934. He was a member of the National Honor Society and the Modern Alchemist Club.

He enlisted in the Naval Reserve on January 29, 1940. In April 1940, he was a naval aviation cadet in Pleasant Grove, Florida. He married Martha Elizabeth Cameron on February 1, 1942, at Norfolk, Virginia.

His mother was Sallie Taylor Durant. He was baptized May 27, 1918 into the Presbyterian Church.

He has a memorial headstone at Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, square 29, lot 47.

He attended “Southwestern at Memphis” – now Rhodes College – for a time before leaving in 1938. The school newspaper said he was survived by a daughter as well as his wife.

Dolive is listed on the killed in action panel at the center of Memorial Hall.

The July 1941 “Commissioned Officers, Cadets, Midshipmen, and Warrant Officers of the United States Naval Reserve” gives his date of rank (as an Ensign, A-VN) was 9/10/40. The July 1943 edition lists him as a LTjg.

His wife was listed as next of kin.

Photographs

From the Lucky Bag

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.

Memorial Hall Error?

Dolive is listed on the killed in action panel in the front of Memorial Hall. While not an obvious error, inclusion on the panel for crashes like this (incidental to combat flights) has been inconsistent across WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.