August 30, 1917 - December 20, 1953 (age 36)
Thomas Theodore Lillie was born in El Reno on August 30, 1917 to Ernest and Alice (Keener) Lillie. He attended school in El Reno at both Lincoln School and at El Reno High School.

After attending EHS through his junior year (and having been employed by the Daily Oklahoman office for a time), Lillie then enlisted for the service from Dallas, Texas on October 9, 1936. He received his initial training at San Diego, and sometime around 1940 he was stationed at Pearl Harbor. There he served as an Air Radioman First Class in Utility Squadron One. However, he was not present when the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7, 1941. Instead, he was on leave in Long Beach where he was spending time with his family. However, not long after the attacks, Lillie did return to Pearl Harbor for duty.

In addition to serving during World War 2, Lillie’s service also carried him through the Korean War era, although his exact roles both then and throughout the remainder of World War 2 have not yet been ascertained in our research. We do know that he spent at least some time aboard the battleship USS Mississippi (BB-41), the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, and destroyer tender USS Dixie (AD-14) during his service. He primarily served as a radio operator in his various assignments, it seems. He was in his 18th year of service when he perished in the line of duty just before Christmas in 1953.

The story of his death began on December 16, 1953, as a Navy PB4Y-2 Privateer weather aircraft (the extensively modified Navy version of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator four-engine heavy bomber) was sent out to intercept typhoon "Doris" in the western Pacific Ocean. It was lost while performing a low-level penetration of the typhoon. After that aircraft was lost, various other planes were sent out from Guam to search for survivors, including an R4D-8 twin-engine aircraft (the Navy version of the Douglas C-47 Skytrain or the civilian DC-3) bearing bureau number 17179. Thomas Theodore Lillie--a native of El Reno now making his home with his family at Phoenix--served as the chief radioman on that flight. For reasons unknown, his plane crashed into the island of Agrihan, a remote island in the northern part of the Northern Mariana Islands, located about 350 miles north of Guam.

The island is a rather impressive yet currently uninhabited inactive volcano that protrudes 3,166 feet out of the Pacific Ocean. The wreckage of the plane in which Lillie and the rest of the ten-man crew perished was found inside the crater of the volcano. Another search plane believed they spotted the wreckage there on December 23, and the next day it was confirmed by a ground search crew shortly before 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, Christmas Eve day, December 24, 1953, and Lillie’s wife was immediately informed about the findings. (His family had already been shaken to the core by the news of his being missing, even removing the presents from beneath their Christmas tree before his death was confirmed. The confirmation of his death the day before Christmas was especially hard for the family to bear.) A bulletin announcing the discovery of Lillie’s plane’s wreckage inside the crater with no survivors was also quickly published in the El Reno Daily Tribune that same day.

At least twelve planes, all launched from the Naval Air Station at Guam, had been used in the search for both the R4D-8 Skytrain and the PB4Y-2 Privateer.

In a somewhat unrelated incident, on December 17, 1953, one day after the Privateer typhoon interceptor was lost, a B-29 Superfortress which had just taken off from Guam's Andersen Air Force Base bound for the mainland U.S. experienced mechanical failure and crashed into a residential area on Guam at 6:48am in the morning, killing 29 people in total, including both men aboard the aircraft and two entire families on the ground.

With these three crashes taking the lives of 48 people in total, it was a very bad week for aviation in the vicinity of Guam and the Northern Marianas.

Married, Thomas Theodore Lillie left behind his wife Alice and their daughter at his home in Phoenix, Arizona, along with a son who was also serving in the Navy, stationed at Corpus Christie, Texas. Other relatives, including his father and two sisters, also survived him.

Athletics

Korea Biographies

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Calvin Eugene "Gene" Key

Thomas Theodore Lillie

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