And Then There Was One

Sad news – one of the two remaining USS Arizona survivors from the Pearl Harbor attack, Ken Potts, died Friday at the age of 102.  His death leaves only one remaining survivor, Lou Conter, 101, who lives in California.

Howard Kenton Potts died Friday at the home in Provo, Utah, that he shared with his wife of 66 years, according to Randy Stratton, whose late father, Donald Stratton, was Potts’ Arizona shipmate and close friend.

Stratton said Potts “had all his marbles” but lately was having a hard time getting out of bed. When Stratton spoke to Potts on his birthday, April 15, he was happy to have made it to 102.

“But he knew that his body was kind of shutting down on him, and he was just hoping that he could get better but (it) turned out not,” Stratton said.

He was working as a crane operator shuttling supplies to the Arizona the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Pearl Harbor attack happened, according to a 2021 article by the Utah National Guard.

Several dozen Arizona survivors have had their ashes interred on the sunken battleship so they could join their shipmates, but Potts didn’t want that, according to Stratton.

“He said he got off once, he’s not going to go back on board again,” he said.

Stratton said many Arizona survivors shared a similar dry sense of humor. That included his own father, who was severely burned in the attack and also did not want to return to the ship as ashes in an urn.

“‘I’ve been cremated once. I’m not going to be cremated twice,’” Donald Stratton joked, according to the younger Stratton, before his death in 2020 at age 97.

Potts is survived by his wife, Doris. Information on other survivors was not immediately available.

Category: Navy, We Remember, WWII