October 8, 1888 - October 6, 1918

Grover Benjamin Bannister was the son of Judge Charles A. Bannister and Josephine Wilma (Hanks) Bannister. He was born on October 8, 1888 in Pratt County, Kansas, and he and his family moved to Oklahoma in 1889, first settling on a farm east of El Reno. In 1895, the family built a new home at 200 North Barker Avenue in El Reno, where they lived for decades thereafter.

Grover Bannister attended school in El Reno, at least attending Irving School. It is unclear what other schools he definitively attended, but he lived in El Reno throughout his school years.

In 1912, the Bannister family was struck with a major tragedy, as Grover's older brother (who was 25 years old at the time) died in an accident while working for an electric company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During World War 1, Grover enlisted in the U.S. Army Coastal Artillery Corps on March 12, 1918. He was assigned to Company 1.

On September 25, 1918, Bannister and hundreds more troops were aboard the British troopship HMS Otranto as it departed from New York bound for Europe and the war raging there. The journey was to be an ill-fated one, as multiple problems plagued the ship, its crew, and the soldiers aboard who were en route to the war in Europe. Spanish influenza was a problem for all the ships in the convoy, then extremely rough seas in a raging storm created more problems. The convoy first encountered the storm on October 4, and it continued to increase in intensity. On October 6, located off the coast of Scotland’s Isle of Islay in Machir Bay, the convoy found itself in what is described as “mountainous waves.” It was here that the HMS Otranto, which had lost its bearings due to the storm, accidentally ran directly into the path of another troopship, the HMS Kashmir. She hit the Otranto amidships, the collision being made even more intense by the gargantuan waves. A large hole was torn in the side of the Otranto, and she immediately began taking on water. Despite rescue efforts, hundreds of troops aboard the Otranto perished, including Pvt. Grover B. Bannister of El Reno.

Back in El Reno, Judge Bannister and his wife were informed that their son Grover had been lost at sea, but the exact details were unknown. The family presumed that his body was never recovered from the incident, but years later they received word that his body had indeed been recovered and, in fact, was among those identified in a Scottish grave that were being reinterred in a national cemetery, the Brookwood cemetery, in Surrey, England. Judge Bannister immediately requested that his son’s body be repatriated to the United States so that it could be interred at home, in the El Reno Cemetery.

Private Bannister’s body was indeed repatriated, and full military rites were almost immediately thereafter performed at the El Reno Cemetery. In fact, the funeral was held ten years to the day from the time that Bannister perished.

The armistice that brought an end to World War 1 was signed just over one month after the Otranto and those hundreds of men lost their lives in this accident at sea.

Athletics

WWI Biographies

Grover Benjamin Bannister

Frank W. Coit

Sidney McKillop Empey

Clyde Osborne Hoffman

Ulysses Simpson Houser

Ernest Moore

Michael Hugh O'Connor

Charles A. Penwright

James Lincoln Reynolds

Stephen Robert “Bob” Shaw

Laurence L. Sheckler

William Tech

Ray Augustus Thein

George Wesley Tomlins