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Cleo was born October 16,
1925 near Bernie, Missouri and attended school in the Bernie area. Cleo
was in high school during the height of World War II. He received his
draft notice in December 1943 barely two months after his 18th
birthday and a senior in high school. He was inducted into the Navy and
went through basic training at Farragut, Idaho, in January and February of
1944. He served aboard an Aircraft Carrier, the Thetus Bay CVE90, and was
in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands in mid 1944. He also was in the
islands of Majuro, Makin and Kwajalien. Then he was assigned to a Navy
crash boat for the balance of the war serving in the Hawaiian Islands at Kaneohe
Bay and the Island of Kauai. Cleo says he saw his brother Paul at Pearl Harbor
over Christmas of 1944, and then saw Red Fralick his brother-in-law about
October 1944.
Cleo was discharged from
service in April 1946 and came back to finish his last half of high school at
Bernie. This is where he met Zola at a high school baseball game in
1950. He says his favorite hobbies are baseball and loving Zola, not
necessarily in that order. He also played about 40 slow pitch softball
games in the summer of 1980, he batted 588 in a church league, which his team
won with a 16 and 2 record. The same team went on to win 11 out of 16
games in the tournament that year.
Cleo met his wife, the
former Zola Mae Dye in 1950 and they were married on June 24, 1951. Cleo
and Zola currently live in Warrenton, Missouri, where he is an employee for the
railroad and also a partner in a barbershop. |
