Riddel, Robert S.

Description

Robert Southgate Riddell

Robert Southgate Riddell was born on April 4, 1911, in Helena, Montana, to Isabel Anderson Southgate and Guy Crosby Riddell. He had one sister, Virginia, and in Rye his family lived at 68 Elmwood Ave. A resident of Rye most of his life, Robert was graduated from Rye High School in 1929, previously he had attended Milton School.

In 1933 he was graduated from the United States Naval Academy and thereafter served for several years aboard various battleships. He then received aviation training at Pensacola, Fl.

He married Nora Lee Clampitt on June 1, 1935, in Los Angeles, California. They had four children during their marriage.

Robert served as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor Hawaii at the outbreak of the war. At the time of the Japanese attack, his wife and two sons Robert Allen, five, and Alexander Crosby, one, had been living with him at Pearl Harbor where he has made his home since 1939.

His
wife and two small sons soon left Pearl Harbor for San Francisco and a visit to Robert’s family in Rye. Eventually, making
their home with her mother, Mrs.
Clampitt, in Los Angeles.

In 1943, after four years at Pearl Harbor, now Lieut. Comdr. Robert Riddell, was stationed at Stanford, FL for bomber training. He then returned to the West Coast
from a special period of advanced
training on the East Coast and had
taken up his duties as a Air Craft Carrier squadron commander of
Lockheed PV-1 Vega Benturas, the Navy’s
new twin engine medium bomber.

Commander Robert S. Riddell, who
has been in Honolulu for four years
and was at Pearl Harbor when the
Japs made their sneak attack, now
heads a squadron of the new, fast,
hard-hitting twin-engine medium bombers In the South Pacific, familiarly
known as Riddell’s “Devilfish PViators.”

Commander Riddell, the son of Mr.
and Mrs. Guy Riddell, Highland Park,
is a graduate of the United States
Naval Academy, Annapolis, in 1933.
His wife and three children, Robert
A., eight: Alexander C, four, and Sandra Lee, born October 24, make their
home in Los Angeles. Calif,
THE RYE CHRONICLE Friday, November 3, 1944

Robert would serve in the US Navy for over 30 years retiring in 1963. He would serve as commander at several Navy airfields as well as the executive officer on The USS Valley Forge (CVS-45).

He and his wife would live in San Diego, CA. They were a fun-loving and generous couple who enjoyed traveling, playing bridge and poker, working in the yard, family get-togethers.