About
World War II (1939-1945)
Donald Garth Richards was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 20, 1913. By 1930, he and his family had moved to Rensselaer, New York, where he worked at a gas station and a confectionery store. By 1935, he had married and settled in Schenectady.
On September 19, 1942, Donald enlisted in the United States Navy. He completed his training in Newport, Rhode Island. He was a machinist's mate first class serving on the USS Spence. He had been on the cruiser Tuscaloosa before being reassigned to the USS Spence, and he had done six months of convoy duty in the Atlantic before heading to the Pacific in 1943, where he served in Bougainville, the Savo Sea, the Marshall Islands, and Saipan. Donald was lost at sea on December 18, 1944, when the USS Spence was destroyed by Typhoon Cobra. He is remembered at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.
Sources: The Schenectady Gazette, Find A Grave, Ancestry