GRANVILLE D. PULLEN, CAPT, USMC

Granville Pullen '71

Date of birth: November 24, 1948

Date of death: January 8, 1975

Age: 26

Lucky Bag

From the 1971 Lucky Bag:

GRANVILLE DEXTER PULLEN

"Deek," a Marine Jr., finished his high school in Hawaii and elected to join the ranks at USNA with an eye on the Corps as a career. Once here, Electrical Engineering was his interest, and with hours on the books he always managed to pull the big grade to stay above a 2.00. Plebe year it was crew, but the other three years were spent with batt news, twice with Brigade Championship teams. First Class year saw him with batt rep for the Corps and a southwest look to Quantico and Marine Air.

GRANVILLE DEXTER PULLEN

"Deek," a Marine Jr., finished his high school in Hawaii and elected to join the ranks at USNA with an eye on the Corps as a career. Once here, Electrical Engineering was his interest, and with hours on the books he always managed to pull the big grade to stay above a 2.00. Plebe year it was crew, but the other three years were spent with batt news, twice with Brigade Championship teams. First Class year saw him with batt rep for the Corps and a southwest look to Quantico and Marine Air.

Loss

Granville was co-pilot and one of five killed when their CH-53 helicopter crashed on a farm near Whaleysville, Maryland on January 8, 1975. He was a member of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron (HMH) 362.

From the The News (Frederick, Maryland) on January 9, 1975:

5 persons were killed Wednesday when Marine Corps helicopter apparently exploded in mid-air and crashed on a near here on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
The craft was on a routine training flight with a crew of two officers and two enlisted men and one military passenger, according to a Marine spokesman....
The Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter crashed about 15 feet from the back porch of farm home of Raymond D. Jones.
Windows were broken in the house, chicken house burned and a storage building was destroyed, although none of the Jones family or their farm animals were injured, according to Mrs. Jones.
Worcester County Sheriff Carroll Serman said, "It evidently blew apart in the air, it was losing parts a thousand feet in the air." The wreckage was strewn over a two-mile radius....
The sheriff said some people thought they saw parachutes after the explosion, but that they were actually seeing pieces of the copter falling.
The aircraft was on a flight from New River. N.C. to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey when it crashed shortly after noon. It was assigned to the 2d Marine Aircraft Wing at the Corps' Cherry Point base.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Granville graduated from Kailua High School in 1967. He and his brother Ricky were both in the concert band together that year.
From the Windward Marine, on June 2, 1967:

In an age of confusion and uncertainty, one young man at least knows what he wants and has known since the fifth grade.
Granville Pullen, son of Major and Mrs. G. D. Pullen, has just secured his appointment to the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.
Granville’s qualifications, in addition to participation in football, basketball, swimming and surfing, includes a 3.78 high school average out of a possible 4.0. Even so his appointment was not easily obtained.
Senator Margaret Chase Smith, from his home state of Maine, had only one appointment to the Academy this year. In state wide competition, he finished second, but the only man to finish higher was disqualified, giving Granville the appointment.
Primarily interested in Nuclear electronics, which is direct conversion of atomic power, he hopes to follow his father, a veteran of 27 years, into the Marine Corps upon graduation.

Granville’s father was Major George Dexter Pullen, Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, Oahu. His mother was Ruth. His father died in 2012 and was survived by son Ricky, wife Donna, and daughter Ashley; daughter Kathi and four children; daughter Lisa and Louis Turner and four children; grandson Granville Dexter Pullen II and his three children, Granville Dexter Pullen III, Sakara and Kieron. Granville’s brother Ricky died in 2018, and his obituary noted that Granville’s nickname was Randy.

Granville is buried in Maine.

From Genealogy.com:

This family lived in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC in the early sixties. In addition to the daughters you had listed, they also had two sons nicknamed Randy and Ricky. The family was transferred to Hawaii, where Randy went to high school. He received and appointment to the United States Naval Academy, which he attended from through. He was stationed in North Carolina, I believe, when he was killed in a helicopter crash over the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1975. After Randy's appointment to the Academy, the family again transferred from Hawaii to North Carolina. Ricky went to high school there, and I believe he married a girl whose first name was Willowdean (the spelling is phonetic as I am unsure of the correct spelling), referred to as Deanie. I believe that they had at least one child. The last thing that I heard was that Ricky was planning to go into managerial training for a fast food restaurant such as Hardee's.