JAMES E. MCMANUS, ENS, USN

James McManus '41

Date of birth: May 9, 1917

Date of death: May 7, 1942

Age: 24

Lucky Bag

From the 1941 Lucky Bag:

JAMES EDWARD McMANUS

Glenwood Springs, Colorado

When Jim left Marble, Colorado, he bade adieu to two years of education as a teacher, and a job in the Marble Rock Quarry. This background, and his Irish wit, have served him well. However, his home in the Rockies was hardly conducive to an acquaintance with the sea, and in Maryland he has felt lost without his mountains and trout streams—he felt lost until the Decatur left New York on the destroyer cruise, when he discovered some mountains in the old Atlantic Ocean. "Mac" has a batting average on the diamond to be proud of and an average for blind dragging that his less fortunate classmates can envy. We'd all like to find out how he does it, but even if we can't put our fingers on the qualities that make for Jim's successes, and since they say men are born with these qualities, we'll just have to step aside and fill the bleachers while the world throws her little obstacles across the plate and Jim parks them over the fence.

Baseball 4, 3, 2; N.

The Class of 1941 was the first of the wartime-accelerated classes, graduating in February 1941.

JAMES EDWARD McMANUS

Glenwood Springs, Colorado

When Jim left Marble, Colorado, he bade adieu to two years of education as a teacher, and a job in the Marble Rock Quarry. This background, and his Irish wit, have served him well. However, his home in the Rockies was hardly conducive to an acquaintance with the sea, and in Maryland he has felt lost without his mountains and trout streams—he felt lost until the Decatur left New York on the destroyer cruise, when he discovered some mountains in the old Atlantic Ocean. "Mac" has a batting average on the diamond to be proud of and an average for blind dragging that his less fortunate classmates can envy. We'd all like to find out how he does it, but even if we can't put our fingers on the qualities that make for Jim's successes, and since they say men are born with these qualities, we'll just have to step aside and fill the bleachers while the world throws her little obstacles across the plate and Jim parks them over the fence.

Baseball 4, 3, 2; N.

The Class of 1941 was the first of the wartime-accelerated classes, graduating in February 1941.

Loss

James was lost when USS Sims (DD 409) was sunk by Japanese dive bombers on May 7, 1942 in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Other Information

His two years of college were at Western State college, "where he was prominent in campus activities and a stellar basketball player." (From The Daily Sentinel on June 13, 1942.) His father was William, mother Maude, brother John and sister Mary.

He has a memory marker in Colorado.

Photographs

From the Lucky Bag's "Stripers" page

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.