Leroy Melvin ‘Roy’ Bird - Pearl Harbor Survivor

October 3, 1920 - July 16, 2020

SAN DIEGO — Leroy “Roy” Melvin Bird, age 99, passed peacefully from this life July 16, 2020, at Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa. Roy was born in the Hillcrest area of San Diego, California, where he grew up, worked in a bakery, and joined the Army Reserve while still in high school.

He was a senior at San Diego High School when tensions in the Pacific caused his unit to be activated, and he was sent to Oahu, Hawaii, for Training as both a cook and infantryman. On the morning of the Pearl Harbor Attack, December 7, 1941, he was on his way to the mess hall to make pancakes when enemy aircraft began strafing the area, causing much destruction and changing

Roy’s life for the next four years.

He spent the next two years in the Pacific theater, traveling from one island to the next as the enemy was confronted. He would place phonograph records he and other soldiers loved in pots to transport them from place to place. After briefly returning home, he was sent to the European

theater where his final assignment was guarding captured German soldiers as that war began to phase down. When the War Department realized how many points he had already earned, his tour of duty ended in June 1945.

Returning from the war, Leroy worked in the aircraft industry, gaining expertise in the manufacture and use of various metals and plastics. He also met the love of his life, Louise Nystul, in San Diego. They thought it would be fun to get married, so they drove over to Yuma and got married on March 15, 1947; their partnership lasted 59 years.

Roy was a hard worker and a dedicated husband who loved working with his hands. He was a leather-craft artist, making finely crafted purses for Louise, bicycle seat covers for neighborhood children as well as belts and slippers embossed with designs of his own creation or scenes of wildlife. He enjoyed a nice jalapeno cheese, good bread, cookies, gardening, fishing, model trains, Big Band Music, and their pets.

He is survived by four nephews and two nieces, in addition to other lifetime friends who will dearly miss him. Leroy will be interred at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, joining his wife, Louise, who passed in 2006.

Please sign the Guest Book online obituaries.sandiegouniontribune.com