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(OSV News) — By any measure, Louis Anthony “Lou” Conter, a Catholic hero of World War II who died April 1 at his home in Grass Valley, California, at age 102, led a celebrated life.
Conter’s funeral Mass will be celebrated April 23 at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Grass Valley, followed by burial with full military honors.
He served for 28 years, retiring at the rank of lieutenant commander, the highest rank possible for someone with a high school diploma.
As a quartermaster on the battleship USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Conter was one of only 335 crewmen and officers aboard to survive the assault by Japanese fighter pilots, bombers and torpedo planes that sank it on Dec. 7, 1941, launching the United States into World War II.
The sailors and Marines killed aboard numbered 1,177. The Arizona casualties amounted to nearly half of the 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, who died that day.
Conter was at his station at the stern when he first heard the Japanese fighter planes at around 8 a.m.
In 2023, he became the Arizona’s last survivor. For many years, he was a welcome figure at military ceremonies commemorating the attack.
“When I walk aboard the USS Arizona Memorial and see those 1,177 names up there, I have to make the sign of the cross and say a prayer for them,” he told a Knights of Columbus interviewer in 2022. “And I thank God my name is on the plaque outside with the survivors.”
Continued below.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
Conter’s funeral Mass will be celebrated April 23 at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Grass Valley, followed by burial with full military honors.
Remembering a WWII hero: Lou Conter
Born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on Sept. 13, 1921, Conter graduated from high school in Colorado. He escaped a hardscrabble life — at age 7, he hunted rabbits in Kansas, where his family was living, in order to provide dinner — and a job in a Hormel meatpacking plant by enlisting in the Navy in 1939.He served for 28 years, retiring at the rank of lieutenant commander, the highest rank possible for someone with a high school diploma.
As a quartermaster on the battleship USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Conter was one of only 335 crewmen and officers aboard to survive the assault by Japanese fighter pilots, bombers and torpedo planes that sank it on Dec. 7, 1941, launching the United States into World War II.
The sailors and Marines killed aboard numbered 1,177. The Arizona casualties amounted to nearly half of the 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, who died that day.
Conter was at his station at the stern when he first heard the Japanese fighter planes at around 8 a.m.
In 2023, he became the Arizona’s last survivor. For many years, he was a welcome figure at military ceremonies commemorating the attack.
“When I walk aboard the USS Arizona Memorial and see those 1,177 names up there, I have to make the sign of the cross and say a prayer for them,” he told a Knights of Columbus interviewer in 2022. “And I thank God my name is on the plaque outside with the survivors.”
Continued below.
Last survivor of USS Arizona, dead at 102, is remembered for patriotism and strong faith
Lou Conter, 102, a Catholic member of the Knights of Columbus and the last survivor of the USS Arizona destroyed in the Japanese Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, passed away April 1.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
