US Merchant Mariner 2nd Assistant Engieer Warren Ashbury Mix Sr. was born in Minneapolis, MN on June 25, 1897, the son of Canadian born Jay Philander Mix (1870-1958) and Eva Maud Wilson (1873-1946). His father was naturalized in 1887 and married Eva in 1896 in Minneapolis. By 1910, Jay was the president of an abstract company in Bay Minnette, Alabama and in 1919 he was in Pensacola as a bookkeeper for the Navy. He and Eva divorced in 1927 and three years later he was an inmate at the Pisgah Home in Los Angeles that was begun by faith healer and social reformer Finis E. Yoakum.
As for Warren, he was working as a clerk for the Texas Oil Company in Pensacola in 1919 and stayed in the oil business for the rest of his life. While in Pensacola he met and married a local girl in 1926 by the name of Jewell Blanche Messer, the daughter of Franklin Pierce Messer (1882-1933) and Ruby Florence Howes (1885-1932). Her father was a local "huckster" who is a person that goes door to door selling small items. In 1930, Warren joined the merchant marines and ten years later he and Jewell had moved to New Orleans where he went to work for the Commercial Molasses Corporation.
All was well until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. All of a sudden American desperately needed her merchant marine force to transport the raw materials required to wage a global war. And as it so happened, Warren was stationed aboard the SS Comol Rico that had just loaded 7,600 tons of molasses in Puerto Rico and had set sail for Boston with 42 crewmen. Included in the crew were six US Navy sailors that manned the guns to protect the ship. At 3:00 PM on April 4, 1942, the German U-154 fired one torpedo striking her amidships and killing Warren and two others below decks. The remaining 39 crewmen were able to take to the lifeboats just before a second torpedo slammed into her sinking her within seconds. The crew were rescued two days later by American destroyers.
The bodies of the three men were never recovered however karma struck the U-boat on July 3, 1944. They were sailing west of Madeira, Portugal, when they were depth charged and sunk with the loss of all hands by the US destroyer escorts USS Inch and Frost.
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