S Navy MM2class Dudley Blair Keen was born in Pensacola on December 6, 1905, son of Charles Keen and Irma Hurd (1892-1974). Irma was the daughter of Jonathan Frederick and Nellie M. Rutherford Hurd and would remarry Louis Edward Miller (1891-1964) of Warrington.
As for Dudley, he would marry Lucille Marie Jenkins on November 4, 1931 in Norfolk, VA, a marriage that would end in 1934. He would marry again to Catherine Parker on September 14, 1940 in Pensacola. Two children were born to this union, Patricia Erma Keen Carpenter (1941-2015) and Dudley Blair Jr. By this time, Dudley was working at NAS and living with his family in the Pleasant Grove community.
Fourteen months after he and Catherine were married, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and America was thrown into WWII. Dudley would enlist in Pensacola on August 12, 1941 and was stationed aboard the Navy coastal patrol boat USS YP-157. He reported on board on February 27, 1942 from the New Orleans receiving station. Three months later they answered a call on May 10, 1942 to pick up survivors from a torpedo damaged tanker called the SS Aurora, 40 miles off Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.
On January 18, 1943, Dudley and a buddy John T. Leahy were granted leave and left their base at NAS Jacksonville and headed westward for home. Twelve miles east of Lake City, they were involved in a head-on collision with a truck and Dudley was killed instantly. His passenger was fatally injured and died in a Navy ambulance on the way to the hospital.
His remains were escorted home by military personnel and buried with military honors in the Duncan Cemetery in Santa Rosa County.
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