Lucky Bag Yearbook

From the 1954 Lucky Bag:

Floyd Gunnard Nelson

WATER POLO—4. CROSS COUNTRY—4,2,1. STEEPLECHASE—2,1. FIELDBALL—3. FOREIGN LANGUAGES CLUB—4,3. RADIO & ELECTRONICS CLUB—3,2,1. ENGINEERING CLUB—2,1. SOUND UNIT—4. PHYSICS CLUB—4,3,2,1. VARSITY: TRACK—3.

The pride of Guilford — a town smaller than the usual podunk — Nel came to Usnay. He spent two years in the Navy as a bluejacket before arriving here. Being at ET he’s a skinny cut, but woe be unto the man who mentions Russian. His favorite phrases were, “What have I done?” and “But Sir!” Being a true red mike, he holds doubts about married life. He is always going on a diet, but seconds on dessert are hard to resist. Plebe year he sparked the company cross country team then succumbed to the varsity radiator squad. Radio is his hobby; occasionally he could be found in the Radio Club Room diligently soldering his fingers to the chassis of his latest electronics monstrosity.

Loss

Floyd was lost on April 9, 1959 when the patrol plane he was aboard crashed in Korea. He was a member of Patrol Squadron (VP) 50; the other nine crew aboard were also killed.

Other Information

From Find A Grave:

Funeral for Lt. Floyd Gunnar Nelson, 30, formerly of Guilford, were held Tuesday in the Guilford Center Presbyterian Church. The Rev. LeRoy Gemmell Pastor, officiated. Burial was in the Sunset Hill Cemetery, Guilford.

Lieutenant Nelson died in the crash of a US Navy airplane April 9 on Cherjudi Island, south of Korea. His body arrived at the Erie Railroad Station in Binghamton from San Francisco Sunday. Funeral arrangements were made by the Seymour Funeral Home in Oxford. Lieutenant Nelson was graduated by Guilford Central School in 1947, and he enlisted in the Navy in 1948, taking his basic training at Great Lakes, IN. He was graduated by the US Naval Academy Annapolis in 1964.

Surviving are his father Gunnar Nelson of Guilford; his wife, Mrs. Patricia Nelson and children, James and Susan Patricia, all of Altoona, Pa., and a sister Mrs. Millie Albert McKie of South New Berlin.

He is buried in New York.