WE FOUND ANOTHER FAMILY!
Last year Jean Pollard, an Alaska educator who has worked tirelessly to celebrate the black heroes of the Alaska Highway, and a terrific friend of our effort to do the same, helped organize an event in Anchorage to celebrate the memory of those men. Ceylon Mitchell lives in Anchorage. His father helped build the highway. He spoke at the event.
But Ceylon knew far less than he wanted to about his father’s service.
A couple of weeks ago, Jean called Chris to tell her about Ceylon; asked permission to give him Chris’ phone number. Permission to give him her phone number? Chris was ready to climb in the car and drive to Anchorage!
Ceylon knew that his father had worked on the Alaska Highway and the Canol Road. And he knew he had served in the Aleutians. Those bits of information sounded like the 93rd; and, with bated breath, Chris searched 93rd Engineers Personnel on this site.
Bingo!
James served under Captain Boyd in Company C.
Born in Virginia on August 27, 1918, oldest of five boys, James left school after the eighth grade to work with his dad as a carpenter. James’ mother, Otelia, worked away from home during at least some of his childhood. The 1930 census lists her as a laborer in a manufacturing plant.
In 1941 James left his job with a “transfer company” to enlist in the Army at Suffolk, Virginia. The Army sent him to Camp Livingston and Company C. And in April, 1942 Company C took him to Yukon Territory.
Ceylon remembers some stories about the Highway. James drove a truck, operated earth moving equipment and built bridges.
He also remembers a treasured book about the war and the highway, but his only solid memory of it is that, when one of his sisters took it to school as a show and tell, her teacher lost it!
After the 93rd moved to the Aleutians in 1943, James found himself too close to a Japanese pillbox when ordinance exploded inside; came home with a limp.
Discharged from the Army on August 12, 1945, James had trouble finding a job; remarked at least once that his $10,000 Army life insurance made him worth more dead than alive! Eventually, though, he signed on as a carpenter at the Norfolk Navy ship yard. And in January, 1946 he married Terease Elyzabeth Wells.
James and Terease raised ten children, four boys and six girls. Ceylon remembers a loving father who worked all the time to take care of his family. His mother completed 6th grade and graduated from a beauty college. “She could take a little bit and make a lot to feed us.”
James had several heart attacks and a “small” stroke then, a month before he died, doctors diagnosed leukemia. He died at 62.
Ceylon served in the Air Force as a security police and mobility instructor. In 1978-79 he served in Galena, Alaska. When he retired from the Air Force in 1992 after 24 years of service, he moved to Anchorage, intending to work on the pipeline and save enough money to open his own business in Virginia.
He and his wife Valerie never left Anchorage, but their three children escaped the frigid North Country. Tina works in South Carolina, Tara is a major in the Air Force, Ceylon Jr. is a music major at the University of Maryland—plays the flute.