Pearl Harbor and Beyond

In a report to the UK Board of Trustees at its May 29, 1942 meeting, President Herman Lee Donovan made it painfully clear the significant impact that Pearl Harbor and World War II was already having on the University of Kentucky.

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UNIVERSITY'S MEN IN SERVICE

Thousands of our former students and graduates are in the various armed forces of the United States fighting for democracy.  Hundreds of them are officers in the United States Army, having received their training in the R.O.T.C.  The University is represented on the battlefields of the world.  Among our graduates are men in the Philippines, Australia, India, Egypt, Russia, Iceland, Ireland, and many other of the outposts of civilization.  The University already had its dead, its captured, its missing and its wounded.  It also had its heroes in this titanic struggle for freedom.  

We do not know all of those who have thus far given their lives for their country, but among its dead are two local boys who were graduated from the University but recently.  They are Lieutenant Harry E. Bullock, Jr., son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry E. Bullock of Lexington, and Lieutenant John R. Evan, Jr., son-in-law of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Hillenmeyer of the Georgetown Pike.

Lieutenant Albert W. Moffett of the United States Marine Corps is reported among the missing.  He may be a prisoner of war.  He was graduated from the University in 1939 and has been fighting in the Philippines.

Captain Tom Spickard, of Princeton, Kentucky, has been decorated for gallantry.  He destroyed two Japanese machine gun nests, and when his company found that it had been encircled by the Japanese in the Philippines, he led his men through a mountain pass over terrain very difficult to negotiate and traveled seventy-five miles in thirty hours without food for his men in order to join the main body of troops.  Captain Spickard is among those who are missing or captured.  He was either at Bataan or Corregidor when last hear of.

Ensign Bailey Price, of Madisonville, of the United States Navy, was killed during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7.  He attended the University of Kentucky before entering the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.

This list could be extended to great length if we had complete information regarding the former students and graduates of the University who are now active in the service of their country.

Known UK men serving in the military as of May, 1942:

Students:  363          Alumni:  507          Faculty:  55

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World War II would not end for another three and a half years.  By then, over 300,000 Kentuckians saw military service, many of them UK students, alumni, and faculty.  Over time, UK Registrar Ezra L. Gillis compiled a list of 9,265 Kentuckians who died in World War II.  That list was later used to place the names of those Kentuckians on the walls of Memorial Coliseum which opened in 1950.