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KEEPS AT WAR:  HUSBAND AND WIFE
Charles Russell Keep, Sr., and Ada Floyd Keep
 
 Charles b 3 Oct. 1896, d 9 Dec. 1974                                        Ada b. 15 March 1902, d. 11 April 1986
 

Charles Russell Keep (724*) was born 3 October 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut to Charles Davis Keep (453*) and Grace Sturges Keep.  [*Found in John Keep of Longmeadow and His Descendants, 1994]

 

Charles Davis Keep was born in Alton, Illinois, and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut.  As an adult he was connected with the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company in Hartford. He served in the city council from 1888 to 1895. For several years he was a member and secretary of the Republican town and city committee. Grace Sturges was from Chicago, Illinois.

Charles Russell Keep was the only sibling to older sister Mildred Sturges Keep (723*) who was born 1894. In 1919 Mildred married George Wildermuth, Esquire. She died in 1945 without children. 
 

Charles Russell Keep attended elementary and high school in Hartford, CT, graduating 1915.  He attended one year of preparatory school prior to entering the class of 1920 at Dartmouth College starting in the autumn of 1916. 

 

After German submarines sank seven U.S. merchant ships and the public revelation of the Zimmerman Telegram from Germany asking Mexico to attack the US, the United States entered the Great War on 6 April 1917.

 

Charles Russell Keep enlisted in the U.S. Navy Air Force Reserve in 1917. When called to duty, his name was flashed on the screen at the Nugget Movie Theater in Hanover, New Hampshire. He left the theater to the cheers of his Dartmouth classmates and proceeded to the Naval flight training facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

Mr. Keep had his flight training at the Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. Naval aviators were instructed in flying seaplanes, dirigibles and free kite balloons. This was the first naval air training station in America, established for this purpose in 1913, and is called the cradle of naval aviation. It was the primary training base for all Navy, Marine and Coast Guard aviators.

Young siblings Mildred Sturges Keep

and Charles Russell Keep

Charles Russell Keep, center. elementary school class photo

Charles Russell Keep, 1918

He was then stationed for the rest of World War I at the Dinner Key Naval Air Facility at Coconut Grove, Florida, near Miami. Established in 1917, Dinner Key became the second largest Naval Air Facility. Charles Russell Keep flew double-wing seaplanes on patrols looking for U-boats over the waters of coastal Florida and the Caribbean. He was a flight instructor teaching new pilot candidates. The importance of the seaplane was due to the recent development of flying machines having preceded the development of now universally present airstrips for take off and landing. Seaplanes could take off and land anywhere there was a body of water. Seaplanes could be stored on ships, lowered onto the water, and the sea was the airstrip. These flying boats were a natural extension of the Navy’s capabilities in the early days of aviation. There was no United States Air Force in WWI.
 

Photo and brief profile in “Flying Officers of the USN 1917-1919”. book published 1919 by the Naval Aviation War Book Committee, Washington D.C.

 

N.A. = Naval Aviator

HTA= Heavier Than Air (airplanes)

LTA= Lighter Than Air (balloons)

Seaplanes at Dinner Key Naval Air Facility at Coconut Grove, FL, 1918

 

WWI Naval Aviator Certificate of Charles Russell Keep

Germany surrendered 11 November 1918, Armistice Day, a little more than two months prior to Mr. Keep’s obtaining his Naval Aviator certification.  On January 18, 1919, Mr. Keep was certified as the 2056th Aviator and Ensign in the Naval Flying Corps.

 

Mr. Keep was discharged 1919. After World War II, Dartmouth College belatedly recognized the service of its World War I veterans and presented them with honorary degrees.  On return to Hartford, CT he addressed local community groups about the wonders of aviation.

 

Russ met Ada Floyd, born 15 March 1902, daughter of Marcus Lawson Floyd and Maude Aloise McDuffie Floyd.

                                                                                                                       

Ada was the 8th child of thirteen of Marcus Lawson Floyd, from his second of three marriages.  Her father, Mr. Floyd, of West Hartford and Floydville, Connecticut, was the United States Department of Agriculture tobacco expert who pioneered the now famous “shade-grown” tobacco industry in Connecticut.  He was originally from southern Georgia. He was also active in politics and formed the Connecticut Progressive or Bull Moose Party in support of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 presidential bid. Mr. Roosevelt visited their farm and Ada recalled having taken his signature bulldog for a walk.

 

Ada’s mother Maude Aloise McDuffee was born in Alabama. Maude’s father John Van McDuffie served in the Union Army as Sergeant-Major in the 2nd Iowa Cavalry.  He later was judge, planter, and Republican representative to Congress from Alabama.  Maude’s mother was Martha Alice (Quinn) Kelly, widow of a Confederate soldier, with two children from that marriage, who had fled Monticello for refuge in Alabama.

 

 

Ada Floyd, age 18 in 1920

Since Ada Floyd was 6 years the junior of Charles Russell Keep, and at 18 years old was under the age of consent, they eloped 10 April 1920. In later years she would tell her grandchildren that it had been widely predicted that the marriage would not last.

 

Ada and Russ eloped to Los Angeles, California where Mr. Keep worked at a Ford assembly plant.  For horsing around he was sent to work in the paint booth as a type of punishment.   Perhaps this led to Mr. and Mrs. Keep returning to the East Coast.  They lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York.  Charles Russell Keep went to work for the Pacific Fire Insurance Company of New York. Charles Russell Keep, Sr. and Ada Floyd’s only son Charles Russell Keep, Jr. (2431*) was born 9 February 1929.  Russell Sr. continued in the US Navy Air Reserve until the late 1920s and flew seaplanes out of the Naval Air Station Rockaway in Queens, New York.  The arrival of his only son in 1929 led to his giving up flying, from safety considerations for a new father flying an open cockpit early seaplane.

 

The Pearl Harbor attack of 8 December 1941 brought the United States into World War II. Charles Russell Keep, Sr. was called on short notice for active duty in the US Naval Air Corps.

C. Russell Keep’s World War II Draft Card

New York insurance industry weekly newspaper clipping, 1942

Dinner Key Naval Air Facility, Coconut Grove, Florida. Early 1940’s

Lieutenant Commander C. Russell Keep, Sr, about 1942

He was given a commission as Lieutenant Commander and was assigned as Commanding Officer to reactivate and command the base at the Dinner Key Naval Air Facility, Coconut Grove, Florida for the duration of the war.  Dinner Key became the hub for all seaplanes servicing U-boat patrols and courier service to patrols through the Caribbean for World War II.  German activity off Florida was significant.  U-Boats sank twenty-four ships off Florida's coasts.  Ships could be seen burning by Floridians and tourists.  In late February 1942, German submarines attacked four merchant ships right off the east coast near Cape Canaveral.  German spies came on shore near Jacksonville. They were captured before they could blow up Florida's railroad lines to interrupt the shipment of war supplies.

 

Shortly after Victory in Europe Day (8 May 1945), Russell was discharged with the rank of Commander. Commander Keep returned to civilian life after serving his country in both World Wars.  While he did not himself see active combat he was an aviator, and pilot instructor in the First World War, and commanded the same Dinner Key Naval Air Station in World War Two.

Husband & Wife Continued on next page 
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