HENRY H. G'SELL, ENS, USN

Henry G'Sell '26

Date of birth: January 24, 1904

Date of death: October 4, 1929

Age: 25

Lucky Bag

From the 1926 Lucky Bag:

Henry Harrison G'Sell

Kansas City, Missouri

"Gizell" "Hank"

BEHOLD what brings the sweet young things to Crabtown! Hank certainly must be a connoisseur of feminine tactics for, besides the girl in Baltimore and the one "somewhere farther on," the Missouri woods must be full of them. That is, if his reputation as a Snake is good for anything.

With the exception of Dago, the Academics have held no terrors for him. The fact is, he has used his Mathy brain to the good advantage of many of his sinking classmates.

His favorite sport is Bridge, but when he is not holding the cards he is usually holding the sheet and tiller of a sailboat. His memorable cruise in a catboat, which others besides himself know of, will not be soon forgotten. "Rain? Well, it surely did!"

It is hard to understand why we have always associated Missouri with the mule when we think of Hank. The only resemblance which he bears to one is in his strength and sturdiness.

His pleasant disposition has made him a real classmate and a friend of all.

Class Water Polo (2).

Henry Harrison G'Sell

Kansas City, Missouri

"Gizell" "Hank"

BEHOLD what brings the sweet young things to Crabtown! Hank certainly must be a connoisseur of feminine tactics for, besides the girl in Baltimore and the one "somewhere farther on," the Missouri woods must be full of them. That is, if his reputation as a Snake is good for anything.

With the exception of Dago, the Academics have held no terrors for him. The fact is, he has used his Mathy brain to the good advantage of many of his sinking classmates.

His favorite sport is Bridge, but when he is not holding the cards he is usually holding the sheet and tiller of a sailboat. His memorable cruise in a catboat, which others besides himself know of, will not be soon forgotten. "Rain? Well, it surely did!"

It is hard to understand why we have always associated Missouri with the mule when we think of Hank. The only resemblance which he bears to one is in his strength and sturdiness.

His pleasant disposition has made him a real classmate and a friend of all.

Class Water Polo (2).

Loss

Henry was lost on October 4, 1929 when the Curtiss F6C-3 aircraft he was piloting crashed near Pensacola, Florida. He was a student pilot.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

The August before attending the Naval Academy, Henry helped out in his uncle Earl’s drug store in Olathe, Kansas.
Henry survived three plane crashes. In one, he was engaged in acrobatic manuevers when he lost control and crashed. He crashed into another plane and parachuted to safety [details below]. A short while after this, he lost a wheel from his plane as he was taking off. He was notified by radio and landed the plane without a crash. A year before, he was in another crash on the west coast in which he was not injured.
He was survived by his mother Mabel and two sisters Hazel and Mabel. His father Henry was a dentist who died in June 1919.

From the August 1, 1929 The Indianapolis Star via 12 o'clock high:

TWO PLANES COLLIDE; 4 MEN ESCAPE UNHURT PENSACOLA, Fla., July 31.- Two marine airplanes collided at an altitude of about two thousand feet today and both were wrecked. Four men escaped. The planes were flown by Ensign H. H. G'Sell and Lieut. C. J. Chappelle. Ensign G'Sell had as his passenger Corp. R. A. Williams, while Lieut. Chappelle had as his passenger Ensign E. O. Southwick. As the crash occurred, Lieut. Chappelle brought his plane over on an even keel and turned its nose toward the naval landing field at the air station. Despite the damage to machine a safe landing was made. The other plane was so badly damaged that the pilot could not right it. The two occupants jumped to safety with parachutes.

Henry is buried in Missouri.

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.