ROGER F. ARMSTRONG, LT, USN

Roger Armstrong '18

Date of birth: September 8, 1894

Date of death: October 26, 1922

Age: 28

Lucky Bag

From the 1918 Lucky Bag:

ROGER FRANKLIN ARMSTRONG

Bristol, Tennessee

"Shad" "Sam"

SAM is one of the characters of the class. No matter in what company he is seen he stands out distinctly individual, a ward boss of the waterfront district, marshaling his forces together as he puffs away on his black Havana, doling out two dollars a vote, loudly denouncing the oligarchy and the demagogue and forcing you into voting for the People's Candidate on the platform of free tariff, free licker, and free skags.

On leave, Sam, with a loud-checked suit, striped shirt and cap pulled down over his eyes, has all the poise and appearance of a race track gambler, and being a silver-tongued orator holds forth at the corner cigar store, where he keeps the languid natives spellbound with his tales of the Whisky's black gang and Jake's rangefinder liberties.

In Mercersburg, Sam made an enviable rep playing football steadily four years and taking a shot at track, and played at the Academy plebe year, but since youngster year an athletic heart has kept him in the stands.

When it comes to an argument Sam has most everybody backed off the boards, not by logic or reason but by lung power; the less his argument has to stand on the louder his voice grows, until he overwhelms and browbeats his opponent by the simple process of drowning him out.

During youngster year Sam had the acid test of friendship applied to him when none other than his old friend Emmett Betts asked him to drag for him. Sam complied and Emmett produced a maiden whose beauty if measured in tons displacement would rate a cold forty.

"Now don't you feel like a ——————?"

"What's that? What's that?"

Varsity Football Squad (4, 3); Sharpshooter Expert Rifleman.

The Class of 1918 was graduated on June 28, 1917 due to World War I.

ROGER FRANKLIN ARMSTRONG

Bristol, Tennessee

"Shad" "Sam"

SAM is one of the characters of the class. No matter in what company he is seen he stands out distinctly individual, a ward boss of the waterfront district, marshaling his forces together as he puffs away on his black Havana, doling out two dollars a vote, loudly denouncing the oligarchy and the demagogue and forcing you into voting for the People's Candidate on the platform of free tariff, free licker, and free skags.

On leave, Sam, with a loud-checked suit, striped shirt and cap pulled down over his eyes, has all the poise and appearance of a race track gambler, and being a silver-tongued orator holds forth at the corner cigar store, where he keeps the languid natives spellbound with his tales of the Whisky's black gang and Jake's rangefinder liberties.

In Mercersburg, Sam made an enviable rep playing football steadily four years and taking a shot at track, and played at the Academy plebe year, but since youngster year an athletic heart has kept him in the stands.

When it comes to an argument Sam has most everybody backed off the boards, not by logic or reason but by lung power; the less his argument has to stand on the louder his voice grows, until he overwhelms and browbeats his opponent by the simple process of drowning him out.

During youngster year Sam had the acid test of friendship applied to him when none other than his old friend Emmett Betts asked him to drag for him. Sam complied and Emmett produced a maiden whose beauty if measured in tons displacement would rate a cold forty.

"Now don't you feel like a ——————?"

"What's that? What's that?"

Varsity Football Squad (4, 3); Sharpshooter Expert Rifleman.

The Class of 1918 was graduated on June 28, 1917 due to World War I.

Loss

Roger was lost on October 26, 1922 when the airplane he was piloting crashed near Naval Air Station Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Other Information

From Find A Grave:

Lieutenant R. F. Armstrong, USN, was designated Naval Aviator #2957 in 1920. Graduated U.S. Naval Academy in 1917, Class of 1918 (one year early due to the World War).
TWO OFFICERS KILLED IN NAVAL PLANE CRASH
Lieutenants E. L. Ericsson and R. F. Armstrong Fall At Hampton Roads
NORFOLK, Virginia, October 26, 1922 – Lieutenants E. L. Ericsson and R. F. Armstrong were instantly killed this afternoon when a JN-4 training plane fell 800 feet at the Hampton Roads Naval Air Station.
The two naval officers had gone for a test flight. Suddenly their plane dropped almost vertically from a height of 800 feet. The first persons to reach the scene of the accident found both officers dead.
At the Naval Air Station it was said that both officers had been there about eighteen months, most of the time on duty with the torpedo training squadron. An inquiry into the cause of the accident was ordered.
At the Navy Department, Lieutenant Ericsson's home address was given as West Hampton Beach, New York, while Lieutenant Armstrong, who was formerly from New Rochelle, New York, was said to have lately changed his residence to Norfolk.

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Roger attended Baker Himel school in Knoxville in 1910 and then Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania in 1912.
In 1914, he was appointed to the Naval Academy as third alternate by Senator Luke Lea.
The first cruise of Naval Academy’s 1918 class was on the battleship Wisconsin. It went through the Panama Canal and stopped in San Francisco to see the exposition in 1915.
Roger married Marie Baker on May 9, 1918, at her home on Neptune Avenue in New Rochelle, New York.
His step-father Robert was a writer who was assistant manager of the industrial relations division of the Eastman Kodak Company. His mother Anne was a writer who published a novel The Seas of God in Spring.

He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

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.