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‘Inspiration To All’: Trump Posthumously Honors Oldest Pearl Harbor Survivor

   DailyWire.com
75th Commemoration Of Attacks On Pearl Harbor Held In Hawaii
Craig T. Kojima – Pool/Getty Images

President Donald Trump signed a bill last week that posthumously named a California post office after a Navy veteran who was the oldest survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The name of Ray Chavez, who died in 2018 at the age of 106, will adorn the main post office in Poway, California, a suburb of San Diego where he lived, according to NBC San Diego.

The bill to name the post office after Chavez was introduced last year by Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), which passed the House and Senate without amendment and with unanimous consent. Trump signed the bill into law last Monday.

“When I found out he was the oldest [Pearl Harbor] survivor in the country, passed away in November [2018], I thought, what a fine tribute this would be not just to him and his family and his community, but to all the veterans who served,” Peters said at the time.

Peters also said that Chavez has “certainly left his mark on this community and our country.”

Kathleen Chavez, who is Ray’s daughter and also a Navy veteran, said, “He’s probably looking down from heaven right now thinking, ‘Gosh, I don’t know why they’re making such a big deal. I was just doing my job.'”

Born March 10, 1912, in San Bernardino, California, to Mexican immigrants, Chavez joined the Navy in 1938 at age 27. He served aboard the USS Condor, a minesweeper that was the first Navy ship to catch sight of a Japanese submarine in the water shortly before the infamous attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

The battle, which killed 2,335 U.S. military personnel and 68 civilians, drew the United States into World War II.

Chavez, who grew up in the Old Town and Logan Heights neighborhoods of San Diego, returned there after the war and worked as a groundskeeper at the University of California, San Diego, and also owned a landscaping company in Poway.

His daughter, Margaret Gibson, as well as his son-in-law William Howard Gibson and 18-month-old granddaughter Mary Kathleen Gibson, were killed in a car accident in 1956. He adopted daughter Kathleen Chavez from a San Diego orphanage in 1957. His wife, Margaret Specht Chavez, whom he married in 1935, died in 1989.

Chavez met Trump in the Oval Office just months before his death on Nov. 21, 2018, from pneumonia. Two days after meeting him, according to NBC News, Trump said, “What a guy. And, Ray, you are truly an inspiration to all who are here today and all of our great country.”

When Chavez died, Trump said, “His legacy is forever etched into our country’s rich history.” The White House also tweeted, “We are saddened to hear the oldest living Pearl Harbor veteran, Ray Chavez, has passed away at the age of 106. We were honored to host him at the White House earlier this year. Thank you for your service to our great Nation, Ray!”

Kathleen Chavez said at the time that her father was unassuming whenever he was asked about his service. “He’d just shrug his shoulders and shake his head and say, ‘I was just doing my job.'”

Related: In Memoriam: Fiske Hanley, World War II Veteran And ‘Special Prisoner,’ 1920-2020

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