From March 13, 2021, Military.com "World War II veteran, believed to be last survivor of those who served in battle aboard the USS San Francisco, dies at 98" by Sam Whiting, San Francisco Chronicle.
Every Memorial Day weekend, a crowd gathers at Land's End, San Francisco to stand in a ceremony beside the gray, shell-pocked bridge of the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco, which served valiantly in the desperate Battle of Guadalcanal. (It was also at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked.)
Chief Petty Officer Richard Jongordon stood at the ceremony with his comrades to the last man, and the last man turned out to be him.
Among the 1200 men who so valiantly fought on the "Frisco" in the great sea battle of November 12-13, 1941, against a vastly superior Japanese fleet, he was considered to be the last survivor and was definitely the last of the fifty or so people who regularly attended the ceremony.
Jongordon died March 6 of natural causes.
He was proud of his service during the war, but even more proud of his accomplishment of saving the wing bridge of his old ship which he and other shipmates found in a Mare Island scrap yard waiting to be scrapped. They saved it.
Today, it is part of a park memorial at Land's End and it has the names of 100 sailors and seven Marines who died aboard the ship in combat.
--GreGen
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