LeRoy Strickland Jr.
T/3 in Signal Co, Special : Radio HQ
Military occupational specialty: 766 (radio operator, high speed, manual)
ASN#13076919
Born 1919 in NJ, Died 1977
County of residence at enlistment: Philadelphia County, PA
Other residence(s): Audubon, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; Van Nuys, CA; Winnetka, CA
United States Army, European Theatre of Operations
Occupation before the war: decorators and window dressers (says his enlistment record, but it's probably wrong)
LeRoy Strickland was born on September 12, 1919 in Carney's Point, NJ (about 20 miles southwest of Philadelphia), the older of two sons. His father worked as an operator in a dyeworks.
The family moved several times; in 1930 they were living in Audubon, NJ (closer to Philadelphia) and LeRoy Sr. was working as a house painter.
LeRoy Jr. completed two years of high school before going to work in construction. On May 17, 1939 he eloped with Marie McLaughlin to marry in Virginia; the teenage couple both lied about their ages on the marriage license. At the time he gave his profession as "electric welder."
The newlyweds lived in Philadelphia and had a daughter, Sally Louise, in 1940. At the time he registered for the draft, on October 16, 1940, LeRoy was working for the Alden Park Building Corporation. (Alden Park Manor was a co-op complex in the Germantown area of Philadelphia.)
He enlisted in the Army on March 18, 1942 in Philadelphia, but around that time his parents (and likely LeRoy's wife and daughter) moved to Lake Isabella, CA where his father had taken a job as a paint foreman.
LeRoy (also known as Roy) became a radio operator in the Signal Company Special, and served in Europe with the unit. He was discharged from the Army on September 13, 1945 at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, CA.
By 1950, he was living in a mobile home park in Van Nuys, CA with his family—a second child, Leroy III, had joined them in 1949—and working as a house painter.
He appears to have enlisted in the Army for another stint, from September 1, 1950 to November 20, 1951.
Little else is known about his life. He and Marie divorced in 1968, and it appears that he moved in with his parents in Lake Isabella. He continued to be a ham radio enthusiast (a hobby he may have taken up before the war—which might have explained his recruitment as a radio operator). A 1971 newspaper article states that a ham radio set worth $545 was stolen from his home in Lake Isabella.
His father died in 1974, and by then (or after his father died) he moved back to Los Angeles, to the same general neighborhood he had lived in after the war. He was living in Winnetka, CA (an LA neighborhood) when he died on March 11 (or possibly March 23), 1977.
Sources:
1920 census
1930 census
1939 marriage record
1940 draft card (under the name of Roy Strickland, Jr.)
1942 enlistment record
1950 Pennsylvania US Veteran's Compensation File
1950 census
1968 California divorce index
https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/265781:1141?ssrc=pt&tid=7549971&pid=432352979559
1971 article in the Valley News (Van Nuys CA) about a ham radio set stolen from him
https://www.newspapers.com/image/30343332/?terms=Leroy%2520Strickland%2C%2520Jr.&match=1
1974 father's obituary
1977 US Social Security Death Index
1977 California US Death Index
1977 VA death record