JOHN A. L. ZENOR, LT, USN

John Zenor '11

Date of birth: July 20, 1887

Date of death: December 20, 1917

Age: 30

Lucky Bag

From the 1911 Lucky Bag:

John Alexander Logan Zenor

Siguache, Colorado

"Jack" "Zen"

THE wild man from the wild and woolly Siguache, who blew into Crabtown speaking mingled Mexican and Cherokee dialect. Nothing has been able to change him, for he is just as wild as when he left his native hills. An authority on women, with experiences by the yard, and likes nothing better than to sit up and tell about them. Although he never saw water outside of a well before he rested his eyes on the blue expanse of the Severn, still, when crew season came around Plebe year, Jack was right there and has the distinction of being the first man in the Class to win his N, Second Class year he initiated Shorty into the mystery of "cyards," and since then both have spent a deal of time on opposite sides of a table. Jack is a true sailor, with a girl in every port, and the Lord knows how many more back in Siguache,

Red N; Yellow N 2nd.

John A. L. Zenor was born in Clay City, Indiana, on July 20, 1887. He has lived in Indiana, Illinois and Colorado and graduated from the High School in his present home, Siguache, Colorado. He went to Colorado University one year and was appointed from Colorado.

John Alexander Logan Zenor

Siguache, Colorado

"Jack" "Zen"

THE wild man from the wild and woolly Siguache, who blew into Crabtown speaking mingled Mexican and Cherokee dialect. Nothing has been able to change him, for he is just as wild as when he left his native hills. An authority on women, with experiences by the yard, and likes nothing better than to sit up and tell about them. Although he never saw water outside of a well before he rested his eyes on the blue expanse of the Severn, still, when crew season came around Plebe year, Jack was right there and has the distinction of being the first man in the Class to win his N, Second Class year he initiated Shorty into the mystery of "cyards," and since then both have spent a deal of time on opposite sides of a table. Jack is a true sailor, with a girl in every port, and the Lord knows how many more back in Siguache,

Red N; Yellow N 2nd.

John A. L. Zenor was born in Clay City, Indiana, on July 20, 1887. He has lived in Indiana, Illinois and Colorado and graduated from the High School in his present home, Siguache, Colorado. He went to Colorado University one year and was appointed from Colorado.

Loss

John was lost on December 20, 1917 when he died of injuries sustained in a fall aboard USS Brooklyn (Armored Cruiser No. 3).

He "was supervising the loading of coal at Manila. A piece of hoisting apparatus gave way, and Lt. Zenor leapt for safety, falling through a hatch and fracturing his skull. He was rushed to Canacao Naval Hospital where he died shortly after arrival."

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

John married Leslie McWilliams on October 16, 1916, at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama.
John’s father was Marshall, a grocery merchant in Colorado, and his mother was Mary. His brothers were Harry and Marcus. Harry was a grocer in Los Angles and was president of the California Retail Grocers and Merchants’ Association in 1940. Marshall's first wife was Elizabeth E. Varley. Their children were Lucie (Mrs. Stack), William and James.

From Baseball's Greatest Sacrifice:

John A.L. Zenor was born in Clay City, Indiana on July 20, 1887. As well as living in Indiana, he also lived in Illinois, and graduated from high school in Saguache, a small rural/agricultural community in the San Luis Valley in Colorado.
Zenor attended one year at Colorado University before enrolling at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Zenor competed in baseball and football at Annapolis, as well as being a member of the crew team.
He graduated in 1911, and later served as commander of the USS Monterey, a double-turreted monitor built in the 1880s. He then transferred to the USS Brooklyn (ACR-3), a cruiser that served as flagship for the Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic Fleet.
In October 1917, Zenor married the daughter of C.F. McWilliams, formerly the eastern representative of the Great Northern Steamship Company and later connected with the Osaka Shosen Kaisha (OSK) Line, based in Yokohama, Japan. The Zenors were a popular couple in and around Manila, where the Brooklyn was based.
On December 20, 1917, Lieutenant Zenor was supervising the loading of coal at Manila. A piece of hoisting apparatus gave way, and Lt. Zenor leapt for safety, falling through a hatch and fracturing his skull. He was rushed to Canacao Naval Hospital where he died shortly after arrival.

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.