WALTER B. SHROUT, LCDR, USN

Walter Shrout '41

Date of birth: July 24, 1918

Date of death: August 5, 1948

Age: 30

Lucky Bag

From the 1941 Lucky Bag:

WALTER BASCOM SHROUT

Sharpsburg, Kentucky

Bob's invariable comment to any conversation is "What's that got to do with making moonshine down in Kentucky?" No one has found out! He stood one in his class for eleven out of twelve years, and tied for first place the extra year. (The fact that there were only six in the class had nothing to do with his showing!)

His impulsiveness is shown when he studies one night—then quits for a week. Study hour usually finds "Pinkie" doing stoopfalls or wrestling with Butch. When the name Pinkie is mentioned, the plebes shudder, but the upper classes recall some funny incidents in which Bob was the hero.

They say you can't have your cake and eat it, but if you watch Bob in action at the table, and inspect his locker almost any time, you can easily see the fallacy of that old proverb. Girls! Well, there was the time he wrote six girls in his home town to send him a picture. The girls got together and he's been having trouble ever since!

Battalion Wrestling 3, 2, 1.

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

WALTER BASCOM SHROUT

Sharpsburg, Kentucky

Bob's invariable comment to any conversation is "What's that got to do with making moonshine down in Kentucky?" No one has found out! He stood one in his class for eleven out of twelve years, and tied for first place the extra year. (The fact that there were only six in the class had nothing to do with his showing!)

His impulsiveness is shown when he studies one night—then quits for a week. Study hour usually finds "Pinkie" doing stoopfalls or wrestling with Butch. When the name Pinkie is mentioned, the plebes shudder, but the upper classes recall some funny incidents in which Bob was the hero.

They say you can't have your cake and eat it, but if you watch Bob in action at the table, and inspect his locker almost any time, you can easily see the fallacy of that old proverb. Girls! Well, there was the time he wrote six girls in his home town to send him a picture. The girls got together and he's been having trouble ever since!

Battalion Wrestling 3, 2, 1.

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

Loss

Walter was lost on August 5, 1948 when the R4D-6 transport plane he was piloting collided with a two-person training aircraft while on approach to Opa-locka airport, Florida. The two men aboard the trainer parachuted to safety, but all ten aboard Walter's transport were killed.

The aircraft belonged to Transport Utility Squadron (VRU) 2.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

In September 1939, Walter invited. J. B. “Bush” Henneberger (’41) of Cheyenne, Wyoming, to spend his vacation time with Walter’s family in Kentucky.
In WWII, Walter served on the heavy cruiser Brooklyn during the landings at Casablanca, North Africa, and he later was assigned to the Naval Air Force. He then served on the aircraft carrier Bennington that led the way for the battleship Missouri into Tokyo Bay for the peace treaty signing.
Walter died when his Navy transport plane crashed. It was scheduled to land in Miami for refueling en route to Puerto Rico from its base at Norfolk, Virginia.
Walter was survived by his wife, Mrs. Caroline Maneese Shrout of Norfolk, Virginia. His father was a farmer and a sheriff, who became a county judge in Bath County, Kentucky. In WWII, his brother James served in the Navy, and brother Nelson was a corporal in service battery 39.
He was also survived by his mother and his sister, Colgate.

He is buried in Kentucky.

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.