James Norman Phipps - WWII War Heroes, World War II - Tribute site by Q Madp

James Norman Phipps

Longview, Washington

December 7, 1941

Age	Military	Rank	Unit/Location
24	Navy	S2c	U.S.S. Oklahoma

Welcoming Home our Hero, Click photo below:

October 14, 2016

For some memorial service snapshots, Click photo below:

October 17, 2016

From The Daily News tdn.com 05/23/15:

Soldier profile: James Norman Phipps
May 23, 2015

Job and rank: Seaman Second Class
Age: 24
Hometown: Longview

Normandee Nelson of Newport, Ore., never knew her uncle and namesake, Norman Phipps, but she remembers many stories about the fallen sailor.

“We’re lucky,” she said of her family’s memories. “There’s a whole generation out there who have not forgotten him.”

Norman’s family worked as Columbia River seine fishermen, she said. Norman was close to his sister, Signa Phipps Nelson, who was Normandee Nelson’s mother.

“They were very, very close, and she was just devastated when he died,” Normandee said of her mom.

Signa kept notebooks for her brother, she said.

“He was crazy about music,” she said. “She would send him lists of what was playing in the Daily Hit Parade.”

Normandee said that her mother didn’t quite believe that her brother was gone until about 20 years ago, when she “finally began to accept it.”

Another of James Phipps’ relatives, cousin Beverly Fisher of Longview, was 16 when he died.

“We saw him a lot, in the summertime especially,” said Fisher, 90. “But I wish I could have seen him and knew him better.”

She recalls him as “tall and slender, and a good-looking fella.”

Normandee said her uncle was a friend to people of diverse nationalities, a trait developed while his family had lived Portland.

“These kids all played softball together,” she and he even had Japanese friends,” she said. “He never looked at people by race.”