ROBERT E. SAYRE, LTJG, USN
Robert Sayre '24
Lucky Bag
From the 1924 Lucky Bag:
ROBERT EUGENE SAYRE
Elgin, Illinois
"Bob"
"CARAMBA! Caramba! Senor, why don't you let me hear-r you r-roll them r-rs—no reason why you can't do it, all the telephone girls do."
"Yes, sir, I know that, but I'm not a telephone girl!" Accompanied by groans from the Prof, this is a very fair example of the way in which our "Don Roberto" surmounted the difficulties of the Dago Department. However, he seems to have been gifted with the ability to make tasks, ordinarily unpleasant to most of us, commonplace. And his jingles:
"A suit of whites a day
Sure keeps the dirt away."
With his soap and bucket, he broke the heart of many a laundry queen on the fair Island of Trinidad.
"The Four Best Years of My Life" marked the high point of his oratorical career. Among the volumes of elements which filled his bookshelf, we found "Why Girls Leave Home", which in all probability accounts for his charms as a snake, though his knowledge in this line seemed to have surpassed the elementary.
"Who has our nickle for the collection this morning, 'Howie'?"
Gymkhana (2, 1); Sub-Squad (4, 3, 2).
ROBERT EUGENE SAYRE
Elgin, Illinois
"Bob"
"CARAMBA! Caramba! Senor, why don't you let me hear-r you r-roll them r-rs—no reason why you can't do it, all the telephone girls do."
"Yes, sir, I know that, but I'm not a telephone girl!" Accompanied by groans from the Prof, this is a very fair example of the way in which our "Don Roberto" surmounted the difficulties of the Dago Department. However, he seems to have been gifted with the ability to make tasks, ordinarily unpleasant to most of us, commonplace. And his jingles:
"A suit of whites a day
Sure keeps the dirt away."
With his soap and bucket, he broke the heart of many a laundry queen on the fair Island of Trinidad.
"The Four Best Years of My Life" marked the high point of his oratorical career. Among the volumes of elements which filled his bookshelf, we found "Why Girls Leave Home", which in all probability accounts for his charms as a snake, though his knowledge in this line seemed to have surpassed the elementary.
"Who has our nickle for the collection this morning, 'Howie'?"
Gymkhana (2, 1); Sub-Squad (4, 3, 2).
Loss
Robert was lost when the airship USS Akron (ZRS 4) crashed off the coast of New Jersey on April 4, 1933. He was aboard as a guest.
Other Information
From researcher Kathy Franz:
Robert graduated from Elgin high school in 1920. Robert and another student were eliminated from the 1920 basketball team owing to the nine semester ruling.
An F3 tornado went through Elgin on Sunday, March 28, and pictures were posted in the yearbook.
According to his family, he was the assistant chief grounding officer on the Akron and was making this last trip to be promoted to active duty aboard the sister-ship Macon. According to the Chicago Tribune, Robert was aboard the Akron in place of Lieut. Commander E. F. Cochran who was ill.
Robert married Helen J. Appold on May 29, 1926, in the study of the First Presbyterian Church in San Diego. Their son Robert was born in November, 1930, in New Jersey. He graduated from La Jolla high school in 1947, and the yearbook reported that he hoped to attend the Naval Academy. He did and graduated in 1952. He resigned in 1956 as a lieutenant (jg.)
After her husband’s death, Helen married Navy officer John Louis Nestor (’22) on August 22, 1936, in Orange County, California. She died in October, 1970.
Robert’s father Eugene was a pharmacist and partner in the Crystal Pharmacy in Elgin; mother Anna, brother Walter, and sister Louise.
Photographs
From the Daily News on April 5, 1933
From his high school yearbook; he was junior class president
From the basketball page of his junior-year high school yearbook
From his senior-year high school yearbook
Video
Akron's executive officer, LCDR Herbert V. Wiley '15, one of only three survivors, was filmed shortly after the crash:
Namesake
Sayre Avenue aboard Moffett Federal Airfield (California) is named for Robert.
Related Articles
William Moffett '90, Fred Berry '08, Henry Cecil '10, Frank McCord '11, Harold Maclellan '18, Joseph Severyns '20, George Calnan '20, Richard Cross, Jr. '21, Herbert Wescoat '23, Charles Callaway '24, Hammond Dugan '24, Charles Miller '25, Charles Redfield '26, Wilfred Bushnell '26, and Cyrus Clendening '27 were also lost aboard Akron.
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.
July 1924
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October 1927
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October 1930
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January 1932
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October 1932
January 1933
April 1933
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