Lucky Bag Yearbook

From the 1924 Lucky Bag:

HERBERT REED BALLINGER

Red

Football B Squad (4, 3); Football A Squad (2, 1).

“STEVE Brodie took a chance.”

Here we have the expression of “Red’s” philosophy, religion, and appetite—a creed which he has kept ever before him through Academic sieges, summer cruises, and September leaves. It may be indiscreet even to whisper how it led him into the wilds of San Francisco’s China Town and left a mark forever on his Youngster soul, or how, when the O. A. O. tried to raise his tastes with a grand opera, he again took a chance. Attempting to catch up in lost sleep, as soon as the lights were out, he set up competition with the star by his sonorous tonality. Perhaps, however, it was only his natural aversion to Dago which drove him to this last drastic proceeding, for this certain lingo has always been his Academic Jonah.

After graduation, he intends to take his chance with the Navy. “It’s the best life ever and the only one for me.” More power to our Navy, for _Red" has all the energy and pluck which his fiery head proclaims.

Loss

Herbert was lost on May 18, 1928 when the O2U scout seaplane he was aboard “crashed into the sea during fleet exercises in Hawaiian waters.” The pilot was also killed.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Herbert married his San Pedro high-school sweetheart Pauline Yesberg in Oakland on January 25, 1926. She followed him to Honolulu on April 25, 1928. She gave birth to their son Herbert Reed Ballinger II on January 14, 1929. He later married Sandra Owen in 1963, and he died in 2003 in Katy, Texas. Pauline remarried K. E. Macbeath, a lumber salesman from Alameda, California. She died in 1979. Herbert’s father was Benjamin, manager of the Union Ice Company. His mother was Margaret, and his sister was Blanche.

Herbert was an excellent football player and all-around athlete in high school. Pauline was an excellent pianist who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley right before they married.

Herbert’s plane was catapulted from the battleship West Virginia. It climbed to a height of 200 feet, went into a sudden spin and crashed into the water. He was on observation duty and not the pilot. Memorial services were held at the San Diego naval air station on May 31.

He was designated Naval Aviator #3311 in 1926.

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.