Donald K. Ross; Winner of Medal of Honor

Donald K. Ross, 81, the first World War II recipient of the Medal of Honor. Ross, a retired Navy captain, was chief engineer on the battleship Nevada when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Wounded and blinded by a bomb, he remained at his station until the Nevada was beached, keeping the ship’s machinery running and preventing it from sinking and blocking the harbor. He was to be taken to the hospital the next day, but instead, Ross directed some rescue and evacuation efforts. He was hospitalized three days later and his eyesight returned after three weeks. Ross was the first of 16 Pearl Harbor heroes who received the Medal of Honor, 12 of them posthumously. It is the nation’s highest military decoration. He retired from the Navy in 1956 and ran a dairy farm. In Port Orchard, Wash., on May 27 of a heart attack.