Late Casper Resident Walt Becker Survived USS Oklahoma Attack

Sheridan native Herman Schmidt was not the one Wyoming native on the USS Oklahoma when it was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Longtime Casper resident Walter Becker, founding father of Becker Fireplace Gear Co, additionally was on board.

Becker was doing laundry within the engine room when torpedoes hit. He ran up 4 or 5 flights of stairs and jumped off simply earlier than the ship capsized.

He swam underneath the harbor’s floor which was lined in burning oil. He was picked up by a raft, reached the shore and went again to the Oklahoma the place he and others drilled via the hull looking for survivors.

After a few days it was obvious nobody was alive inside.

He then signed up with the destroyer USS Blue, which was attacked and sunk at Guadalcanal.

After that, Becker was assigned to an plane service that was attacked and sunk by kamikaze planes.

After the struggle, he finally moved to Casper the place he based the Becker Fireplace Gear Co., which began on East Yellowstone Freeway, then moved to Southeast Wyoming Boulevard after which to Six Mile Street west of Mills the place as much as 100 workers constructed hearth vehicles and different emergency gear.

American LaFrance, — a subsidiary of Freightliner LLC, which later turned a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler — purchased half the corporate in 1999.

Different enterprise transactions occurred and Becker Fireplace Gear Co., was shut down in February 2006.

Walter Becker died on Dec. 4, 2015, on the age of 94. His stays are inured on the Oregon Path Veterans Cemetery north of Evansville.

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In full disclosure, I’m a son of Pearl Harbor survivor George T. Morton, who died in August 2019.

My dad met Walter Becker over lunch at a Pearl Harbor Survivors Affiliation reunion in Honolulu a while within the late Nineties. The 2 veterans began speaking about the place they lived, and my identify got here up within the dialog. A 12 months or two later, I wrote about his story within the Casper Star-Tribune on Dec. 7, 2001, for the sixtieth anniversary of the assault

Like many veterans I’ve recognized, they do not a lot speak about their wartime experiences.

I by no means would have recognized about him however for him assembly my dad. He was not one to come back to the newspaper and brag about his experiences.

However these experiences of getting three ships shot out from underneath him through the struggle most likely are uncommon at the very least if not distinctive.

I’m proud to have recognized him.

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