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San Diego veteran who was nation’s oldest Pearl Harbor survivor has died at 106

Pearl Harbor Survivor Ray Chavez photographed at a ceremony in August 2017 at the Veterans Museum at Balboa Park. Chavez was the oldest- known surviving veteran of the Pearl Harbor attack. He died Nov. 21 at the age of 106.
(Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune )
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Ray Chavez, the nation’s oldest surviving veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor, died Wednesday at the age of 106.

Kathleen Chavez, who had been her father’s live-in caregiver for more than 20 years, said he passed away peacefully in his sleep between 3 and 6 a.m. Wednesday. His health had declined in recent months and he was on hospice care when he passed.

A memorial Mass for Chavez will be held at 10:30 a.m. Dec. 13 at St. Michael’s Catholic Church at 15546 Pomerado Road in Poway. A burial will full military honors will follow at Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego.

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Kathleen also said that she will be flying to Oahu in her father’s honor for the 77th annual Pearl Harbor memorial on Dec. 7 as a guest of the Spirit of Liberty Foundation. Chairman Richard Rovsek is planning a wreath-floating service in Ray’s honor.

Chavez surged into national prominence three years ago when fellow Pearl Harbor veterans recognized him as the oldest survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack that ushered the U.S. into World War II.

At its peak, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association had 58,000 members. Today, there are fewer than 200, according to Stu Hedley, 97, who heads the association’s now-10-member San Diego chapter.

“Ray Chavez was a very active member for years and I admired the man,” said Hedley, 97, a retired Navy chief petty officer who served on the USS West Virginia at the time of the attack.

Because of his senior position among Pearl Harbor vets, Chavez was a frequent guest at commemorative events around the country, including a visit to the White House last Memorial Day weekend.

The soft-spoken Chavez often said he was overwhelmed by the media attention but he was proud to represent his country.

“Ray was the epitome of the greatest generation,’ said Richard Rovsek, a trustee of the nonprofit Spirit of Liberty Foundation in Rancho Santa Fe, which underwrote many of Chavez’s trips over the past six years. “He was always proud to be an American and proud of the military.”

Chavez was born in San Bernardino in 1911 and grew up in San Diego’s Old Town and Logan Heights communities, where his large family ran a wholesale flower business.

In his early 20s, he married and had a daughter. In 1938, at the age of 27, he joined the Navy and was assigned to the minesweeper USS Condor at Pearl Harbor.

At 3:45 a.m. Dec. 7, 1941, Seaman 1st Class Chavez’s crew was sweeping the east entrance to the harbor when they spotted the periscope of a Japanese midget submarine. After depth charges were dropped to sink the sub in 1,500 feet of water, the rest of the morning passed uneventfully.

He told the Union-Tribune that he was asleep at home in nearby Ewa Beach when the Japanese bombing raid began at 8:10 a.m.

“My wife ran in and said, ‘We’re being attacked’ and I said, ‘Who’s going to attack us? Nobody.’ She said that the whole harbor was on fire and when I got outside I saw that everything was black from all the burning oil.”

He spent the next nine days on continuous duty in and around Pearl Harbor and said the scenes he witnessed left deep emotional scars.

Photos taken of Ray Chavez during his years in the U.S. Navy from 1938 to 1945. The Poway Navy veteran was the nation's oldest surviving Pearl Harbor veteran until his death Nov. 21, 2018, at the age of 106.
(Howard Lipin / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Over the next four years, he rose to the rank of chief, serving on transport ships that delivered tanks and Marines to shore in eight Pacific battles. Although he wasn’t injured during the war, he retired from the Navy in 1945 with psychological wounds from the carnage he witnessed.

“He said that after a couple of the battles he saw, he started to shake,” Kathleen said. “First it was his hands, then it was his arms. By the time the war was over, his whole body shook.”

During his exit physical from the Navy, a doctor wanted Chavez to spend some time recovering in a mental health clinic, but he feared it would impact future job opportunities. He declined the offer and moved back to San Diego, where he got a job at a nursery. After two years working outdoors in the fresh air, he got better, Kathleen said.

In the 1950s, he and his wife, Margaret, suffered an unimaginable blow when their daughter, son-in-law and 18-month-old granddaughter were killed in a car accident.

To mend their broken hearts, they adopted 5-year-old Kathleen from a San Diego orphanage in 1957. She, too, served in the Navy, from 1974 to 1991 and was recognized as the Navy’s first woman jet engine mechanic. She had lived with her father since her mother’s death in the mid-1980s.

Chavez, an avid reader and traveler, spent 30 years as a groundskeeper at UC San Diego. Then he ran his own landscaping and grounds-keeping business in the Poway area until he finally retired at age 96.

Poway Mayor Steve Vaus described Chavez as a beloved hometown figure.

“Poway knew Ray not only as the oldest Pearl Harbor survivor but one of the last of the greatest generation,” Vaus said. “And though he was a humble hero, he was still idolized and fawned over more than anybody else ever in Poway.”

When he was 101, Chavez fell and broke his arm and his health and weight declined. Kathleen signed him up with personal trainer Sean Thompson, who she said extended her father’s life by several years by getting him back in shape.

Kathleen said her father never spoke about his Pearl Harbor experiences until 1991, when he was invited to attend the 50th anniversary memorial in Hawaii.

It was such a moving experience for him, that he and Kathleen went back to the Pearl Harbor events more than a dozen times.

“We went last year and if he was still alive, we were going back again next month,” Kathleen said. “I think he enjoyed the experience but he never saw himself as any different from the other men he served with. He’d always say, ‘I’m no hero. I just did my job.’”

Chavez was the child of Mexican immigrants and Kathleen said her father experienced some racism and discrimination as a high school student and in the Navy. But he remained a patriotic citizen.

From the age of 21, he voted in every election, mostly for Democratic candidates. He told Rovsek that the only Republican he ever voted for was Dwight D. Eisenhower, an Army veteran.

Chavez’s political leanings caused a minor kerfuffle last May when he was invited to meet President Trump at the White House, Kathleen said. The night before his Oval Office visit, Chavez was interviewed at his hotel by a CNN reporter and said on video aired nationally about Trump: “I didn’t vote for that guy.”

Nonetheless, Chavez charmed the president the following morning and Trump later praised him during a public Memorial Day service.

“The crowd just stood up and erupted,” said Rovsek, who escorted the Chavezes to Washington, D.C. A White House source told Rovsek on Wednesday that President Trump is planning to honor Chavez’s memory in the coming days.

On Dec. 7, Hedley will host the local Pearl Harbor Survivors Association’s annual memorial service aboard the USS Midway Museum. Chavez, and five other local members who passed this year, will be honored with a two-bell ceremony.

Kathleen said she won’t be able to attend the local Pearl Harbor memorial service because she will be flying to Oahu, as a guest of the Spirit of Liberty Foundation, to attend the 77th Pearl Harbor anniversary memorial in her father’s honor. Rovsek is arranging a wreath-floating ceremony for Chavez in Pearl Harbor.

Rovsek described Chavez as a man of few words, but he did say Chavez was troubled by the state of politics in the U.S. today.

“He said to me, ‘can’t we just keep America together? Why are we so divisive. In my life time, I’ve never seen the divisiveness I see today.’ It made him sad,” Rovsek said.

Kathleen Chavez said the public is invited to attend her father’s memorial mass at St. Michael’s parish. In lieu of flowers, she suggests donations be made to VFW Post 7907 by calling (858) 257-3412 or visit vfw7907.com/.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com

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