JOYCE A. RALPH, CDR, USN

Joyce Ralph '23

Date of birth: December 26, 1899

Date of death: August 16, 1942

Age: 42

Lucky Bag

From the 1923 Lucky Bag:

Joyce Allen Ralph

Bisbee, Arizona

"Axle" "Bill"

NON-REG, that's him all over again. Plebe year he was on probation before Christmas. His trouble was too much courting of Lady Nicotine. However, with a little luck and good tendencies, he finished the year, collecting just a few over a hundred more demerits.

Early in Youngster year he began his quest for the ideal "femme". Since then his range of drags has been wide and varied, but his general average has made his fussing well worth while.

As a charter member of the Radiator Club he reigns supreme. Except on leave, sleep has always been very essential to him. With his ability to sleep at any time, anywhere and in any position, insomnia will never be a menace to him.

Heaving the heavy line has long been a favorite pastime of his. That he is both entertaining and instructive is evidenced by the fact that, after four long years his friends are still glad to sit down and listen for hours at a time. And last but not least are those wonderful inspirations of his.

Log Staff (4, 3).

Joyce Allen Ralph

Bisbee, Arizona

"Axle" "Bill"

NON-REG, that's him all over again. Plebe year he was on probation before Christmas. His trouble was too much courting of Lady Nicotine. However, with a little luck and good tendencies, he finished the year, collecting just a few over a hundred more demerits.

Early in Youngster year he began his quest for the ideal "femme". Since then his range of drags has been wide and varied, but his general average has made his fussing well worth while.

As a charter member of the Radiator Club he reigns supreme. Except on leave, sleep has always been very essential to him. With his ability to sleep at any time, anywhere and in any position, insomnia will never be a menace to him.

Heaving the heavy line has long been a favorite pastime of his. That he is both entertaining and instructive is evidenced by the fact that, after four long years his friends are still glad to sit down and listen for hours at a time. And last but not least are those wonderful inspirations of his.

Log Staff (4, 3).

Loss

Joyce was lost when the transport plane he was aboard crashed near Kodiak, Alaska, on August 16, 1942.

From a now-broken link, this undated passage:

Plane With 14 Missing in Alaska - A U.S. Navy plane with a crew of four and ten passengers enroute from Kodiak to Whitehorse, Alaska was reported overdue by the Navy Department, which notified next of kin of those aboard that the crew and passengers were missing. The flight was a routine one from Kodiak to Seattle, Wash. Three planes started on the trip and were forced to fly by instrument soon after taking off. Two made their way through the bad weather to Whitehorse. Naval aircraft have been making searches for the missing plane and other agencies were asked to assist in the search.
Those aboard the missing plane were Commander Joyce A. Ralph, USN; Lieut. Comdrs. Burton Lee Doggett, USN, Jerome H. Sparbo. USNR and Paul H. Tobelman, USN; Captain Arthur Barrows. USMC; Lieuts. Joseph A. Crook, USN and Thomas E. Johnson. Jr. (ChC), USN; Lieuts. (j.g.) Thomas G. Cherikos, USNR. Charles E. Deterding, USN and Jay A. Noble, Jr.. USN: Ensign Charles L. Mixon, USNR; Charles E. Barber. ACRM. USN; H. A. Scott, ACRM, USN, and C O. Walton, AMM2c. USN.

The aircraft was never located, and all 14 passengers and crew were declared dead a year and a day following their disappearance. The aircraft was a part of Transport Squadron (VR) 2.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

In August 1916, Joyce and his classmates spent a ten-day camping trip in the Government Draw to get in good physical condition for the upcoming football season.
Besides football, Joyce played basketball, was a military cadet and editor of the jokes section for the yearbook. He graduated from Bisbee high school in 1918.
From the Bisbee Daily Review, Arizona, March 3, 1918:

Joyce’s senior class presented the Lindsey Barbee play “The Thread of Destiny.” A quarantine caused the production to be postponed just as it was about to be presented.
“Joyce Ralph as Beverly Montgomery, the brother and Confederate scout, had one of the most difficult roles and his acting was nothing short of professional, the man who loved his state better than his life and was prepared to fight for his convictions he had the sympathy of the entire audience when hunted like an animal, the sought refuge from the Union soldiers in his father’s home.”

From the Bisbee Daily Review, May 9, 1918

The senior class presented class day exercises. Joyce and a classmate played two soldiers in a training camp, and the senior girls were guests at a house party. Joyce was part of the quartet that interspersed songs with dialog of class events and tribulations. Joyce then presented the class prophecy as a dream. Something funny and amusing was said about each member.

After graduation, Joyce took the Navy entrance examination in El Paso to be a radio electrician. In January, 1919, he returned to electrician school in Mare Island, California. In March, he transferred to the officers’ material school for a two month course to prepare for Annapolis.
In the summer of 1922, Joyce and others were on the U. S. S. Olympia for their summer cruise. The Olympia was Admiral Dewey’s flagship at the battle of Manila Bay, and she was also the ship which brought the unknown soldier’s body from France to the United States.
On June 7, 1923, Joyce married Lily Edmonston George in Baltimore, Maryland. She died in 1993 in Annapolis. Their daughter Sally Jean was born in 1928 in San Diego.
In 1930, Lily and Sally sailed for Honolulu, and they returned to San Francisco in June, 1932. From 1937 to 1940, the family lived in China. They sailed back to San Francisco in July, 1940.
During the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joyce was on a battleship in the harbor.
In 1920, Joyce’s father Allan L. was a shift boss at the southwest shaft of the Copper Queen mine in Bisbee. Joyce’s mother was Anna, brother John, and sister Marjorie. In 1910, they lived in Tombstone where his father was a manager of a silver mine.

His wife was listed as next of kin.

Photographs

From The Baltimore Sun on August 26, 1942

Career

Joyce was the commanding officer of USS Schley (APD 14) following that ship's recommissioning in October 1940. He served aboard Schley until July 1941.

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.