Robert Edward Moody, Seaman Second Class, was born in Carpenter, Copiah County, Mississippi, the fourth of ten children, of Robert and Lennie (Note - Irene) Moody. The family moved to Utica where Robert attended elementary school and went through the 11th grade of Utica High School before enlisting in the Civilian Conservation Corps and worked in North Carolina.
 
Returning to Utica, he farmed with his father for a year before enlisting in the US Navy. After boot camp and a short tour of duty in Bremerton, Washington, he was assigned to the battleship ARIZONA. In February 1941, the Arizona headed for its duty station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Robert went down with the ship during the December 7th, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. He remains today entombed in the sunken ship along with 1,102 of his shapmates, where the ship remains a lasting memorial to that attack on "battleship row."
 
Robert was followed into the US Navy by three brothers - Sam, Eugene, and Tom; On December 12, 1945, the American Legion members in Utica honored Robert Moody and Lloyd Davis, the first two Utica men killed in World War II, by naming the American Legion Post the Moody-Davis Post.
 
Robert Moody was the great-grandson of Amy Jane Broome and W.H. Landers. Jane Broome was the elder daughter of Matthew Broome and Nancy Robison.
 
Source:
The Masons and the Methodists in Utica, Mississippi, compiled by James E. Price, 1998.
 
 

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