Whipped Cream Difficulties

Jessie Mahaffey (Boatswain’s Mate Second Class, United States Navy – ret.) passed away on March 1st. He was 102.

Mr. Mahaffey served on the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

In December, Mr. Mahaffey told KTBS-TV of Shreveport, La., that Dec. 7, 1941, had started as a quiet Sunday.
He and five other sailors were chatting as they scrubbed the deck of the Oklahoma when they “heard a siren, saw planes and smoke,” he said, adding, “It must have only gone on for 45 minutes, but it was crazy.”
The Oklahoma was struck by as many as nine torpedoes. Within minutes, the battleship capsized, trapping hundreds of men below deck. “It didn’t take that long to come back to the other side,” he said. “It turned upside down and we had to slide over the bottom of the ship into the water.”
He managed to swim to the U.S.S. Maryland, another battleship that was moored at Pearl Harbor.
In total, 429 crew members from the Oklahoma were killed in the attack, which left more than 2,400 U.S. military personnel and civilians dead and nearly 1,800 wounded.

He went on to serve on the U.S.S. Northampton, which was sunk by the Japanese on November 30, 1942.

“The ship was sunk at midnight, and we had to stay on rafts the whole night,” Mr. Mahaffey told KTBS.

…

When he turned 100, in 2022, Mr. Mahaffey told KPLC-TV of Lake Charles, La., about the day he married Joyce Inez Mahaffey. “My best day would be marrying that little gal that just turned 18 years old,” he said. “Me, her and her brother went to that church.”
Ms. Mahaffey died in 2003. His survivors include his sons George and Clarence; several grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandson.
After he was discharged from the Navy, Mr. Mahaffey returned to Louisiana, where he worked for Southwestern Bell, the regional phone company, for at least 30 years, his grandson said. Mr. Mahaffey, who was 5-foot-3, was a pole climber who refused to accept jobs that would require him to work indoors, John Mahaffey said.“They kept trying to give him promotions, to come inside, to take a desk job or to run the crews or to be a supervisor, and he would never take it,” he said.

…

In an interview on Sunday, John Mahaffey, his grandson, said that Mr. Mahaffey would talk about his time in the Navy only when his relatives would ask him about it, which they did often.

According to the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, there are 14 remaining Pearl Harbor survivors.

John Mahaffey said his family had been told that his grandfather was one of just two or three remaining survivors from the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2025 at 9:09 am and is filed under Heroism, History, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.