When Dick Higgins, the last survivor of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association’s Orange County Chapter 14, spoke of fellow survivor John Hughes’s death, he remarked on the importance of the association’s brotherhood.
“We were a band of brothers,” he said in a 2022 interview.
That brotherhood is now forever eternal. Higgins died Tuesday, March 19, at 102.
“I just never left his side,” said Angela Norton, Higgins’ granddaughter with whom he lived in Bend, Ore. “I wanted to be with him on his final breath. At 1:42 a.m., he went home to be with his savior and his wife, Winnie Ruth.”
Higgins lived with Norton and her family for the last decade, since leaving Orange County in 2013.
Most recently, she said her grandfather was honored on Dec. 7, the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, by a local high school that named him a “Bend Bear,” a recognition given to local heroes who are extraordinary. The day before was recognized as “Dick Higgins Day” by the Bend City Council.
Higgins was a radioman stationed on Ford Island with a squadron of PBY seaplanes when the Japanese attacked the harbor.
“He shared he will never forget the explosions of the ships and the planes all around him and helping the sailors and Marines – who jumped off burning ships and were swimming toward the launch ramp – get to land and out of the burning water, ” said Dwight Hanson, a retired Marine aviation electrician who served at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro from 1987 to 1993. He met Higgins, a longtime Orange County resident, at a memorial ceremony for Pearl Harbor veterans years ago and later attended meetings of the survivors’ association.
Though he is half Higgins’ age, Hanson became fascinated by the elder petty officer’s tales, he said, and would always ask more about his 20 years of service. Higgins served in the Navy from 1939 to 1959.
That history is also what Gary Laine, a Bay Area Honor Flight member, was after when he chatted with Higgins in November while in Bend. Laine, like Hanson, has a particular interest in the “Greatest Generation” veterans and has interviewed more than 100 who served in World War II, including 14 who were Pearl Harbor survivors.
“He was there when the war started, bombs were dropping,” Laine said. “He was carrying fuel tanks and with one spark, he could have been history. The courage he exhibited on the day of the attack, I’m in awe of that. He is a hero to me.”
Though Higgins’ memory wasn’t as fluid when they talked, Laine said the elder veteran shared some intricate details of his service that he had written out, as well as the log books that showed activities from that day and other missions in which he participated. Laine said he spent the visit taking photos of Higgins with some of his memorabilia and listening to his stories. He also noted the tremendous love and admiration Norton had for her grandfather.
Sharing history meant the world to Higgins, Norton said.
“He was a very humble man,” she said, adding how much the reference Tom Brokaw made about the “Greatest Generation” applied to her grandfather. “That generation was about no glory, no honors; he was just there to help his country. He’d always say, ‘Freedom isn’t free.’
“The more he could share about how incredible our country is and how honored he was to live here,” she said, “the happier he was.
“He’d say (freedom) is impossible to get back and those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” she added. “Those are the quotes he’d always say.”
Higgins was born in Mangum, Okla., in July 24, 1921. He settled in Orange County in 1954.
He interacted with many local school children over the years through the Freedom Committee of Orange County, a nonprofit veterans group based in Costa Mesa, Norton said. With the group he did living history reenactments with a focus on Pearl Harbor, she said.
“They would go around to middle schools and high schools and would tell their stories,” she said. “Kids would get assigned to do reports on the veterans. He had so many reports students wrote about him.”
Norton said she and her husband and young children cherish the time they spent with Higgins, adding that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years ago, but that his mind was still there.
“We thought it was going to be a short time, but he kept living,” she said, becoming emotional. “For a good part of it, he was independent. It was so incredibly worth it to have this treasure and have him there for the kids. We are grateful for the full and celebrated life he had.”
A memorial service with full military honors is planned at Deschutes Memorial Gardens in Bend. Patriot Riders will escort him to Portland for an Honor Flight to John Wayne Airport and he will be laid to rest in a Garden Grove cemetery where his wife, who died 20 years ago, is buried. Dates are still pending.
