Pearl Harbor attack survivor dies in Boulder City at 93
One of Southern Nevada’s last remaining survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack, which launched the U.S. into World War II, will be remembered in a memorial service May 29.
Willis V. Avery died May 13 in Boulder City at 93. On Dec. 7, 1941, he scrambled to get the wounded into lifeboats before the USS Arizona sank during the raid by Japanese warplanes on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
As a 19-year-old pharmacist mate from Vestal, N.Y., he was on the USS Solace hospital ship anchored near the Arizona. As it sunk, he and others from the Solace hopped in longboats and gigs and rushed to rescue sailors from the battleship and the oil slick around it.
“I was afraid we weren’t going to make it,” he told the Review-Journal in December. Several times he was ordered to leave the ship, but he continued to load the scorched and wounded until the last boat was full.
Avery played the clarinet and saxophone in Navy bands, including one in Auckland, New Zealand where he met his wife, Miriam, of 54 years. Music from the Big Band era played continuously in his room at a seniors home in Boulder City, where he kept a clarinet by his nightstand and would occasionally play it.
He was raised on a dairy farm in southern New York, along the Pennsylvania state line. After World War II, he worked 33 years for IBM Corp., in Endicott, N.Y. He and Miriam retired in Lady Lake, Fla., and later moved to Boulder City in 1991.
He is survived by son, Bill Avery of Boulder City, and daughter, Sandra Sanders, of El Dorado Hills, Calif. He also leaves four grandsons and and two great granddaughters.
The memorial service is set for 10:40 a.m. May 29 in the chapel of the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.
In lieu of flowers, the family prefers donations sent to the Senior Center of Boulder City, 813 Arizona St., Boulder City, NV 89005.
Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2.