BARBERTON: The telegram arrived a few days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.Barberton residents Betty and Maurice McNeill opened it and discovered the terrible news.Their son, Navy Chief Storekeeper Jim McNeill, 23, had been killed Dec. 7, 1941, while serving on the USS West Virginia.Several weeks later, their phone rang with shocking news. On the line was Jim McNeill, obviously not dead.“He was quite excited,” Jim said of the reaction of his father, who enlisted in the Navy after believing that his son had been killed. The father served on supply ships in the Atlantic during the war.Today marks the 70th anniversary of the attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii that led to the country’s entry into World War II.McNeill, who is 93, clearly remembers the day of the attack.It was a Sunday morning and he was in his dress white uniform preparing to go ashore.The USS Oklahoma, which was moored nearby, was hit and an order was issued by an officer on McNeill’s ship to prepare to help rescue the wounded.McNeill’s job during a so-called “Away Fire and Rescue” order was to go to the deck of the ailing ship.As he was climbing to the deck, a torpedo hit his battleship, the USS West Virginia, throwing McNeill through the air and knocking him unconscious.More than 30 sailors who were still in his compartment sleeping when the attack occurred were killed. Another 76 sailors on the West Virginia were killed as the ship ended up partially submerged in the harbor.The attack claimed the lives of about 2,400 U.S. service members.Jim McNeill’s son, David, 61, who lives with his parents, said the correct order that day should have been “General Quarters.”But had that order been given, David’s father would have been manning a station in the belly of the ship.“He would have been killed,” his son said. “Pop ran up the stairs to his fire-and-rescue station which was on the deck.”And “because of that I am here today,” David said. The son continued the family tradition of serving in the Navy.McNeill was wounded in the arm by shrapnel. As the attack continued, he and another sailor made their way to shore and took cover under a truck as Japanese warplanes rained bullets from above.He recalls a man ran by and yelled to them to get out because they were hiding under a gas truck.McNeill, a retired manufacturer’s representative and salesman, grew up in East Liverpool and moved to Barberton in 1940 when he was 22. It was the same year he joined the Navy.It was in Barberton that he met Helen Spray who lived across the street from his parents.Spray worked at the Ravenna Arsenal during the war in the payroll department.Because she had relatives in Long Beach, Calif., and she was looking for adventure and wanted to see more of the country, she moved out West and took a job with Bethlehem Steel.She stayed in touch with McNeill during the war and saw him a few times.Several months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the West Virginia was raised and sailed to Bremerton, Wash., for repairs.McNeill was assigned to another ship and wound up in New Guinea, but that ship was blown up and he was sent back to Pearl Harbor to be reunited with the USS West Virginia in 1944.McNeill participated in 11 battles on the West Virginia, including Iwo Jima where the battleship pounded caves on Mount Suribachi where Japanese soldiers were holed up firing on Marines on the beach below.“We were within 100 yards of shore,” McNeill recalled. “We put 16-inch shells in the caves, which ended that.”During his time in the Navy, he met Fleet Adm. Chester William Nimitz and saw Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines.In September 1945, he phoned Spray to ask her to marry him. They were married on Sept. 15, 1945.“Sixty-six years,” said Helen McNeill, 91. The couple have two children, Dave McNeill of Barberton and Tish Biggs of Norton, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.Helen said they traveled to Pearl Harbor eight years ago — the first time her husband had been back since the attack.A Marine escorted him to the memorial at Pearl Harbor.“He asked me for a Kleenex,” she said. “He cried.”McNeill said he has occasional flashbacks of the Pearl Harbor attack.One time, he said, he woke up and climbed over his wife in bed “trying to save somebody.”A few days after the attack, he grabbed the USS West Virginia’s commissioning pennant, which he keeps in a frame along with a photograph of the West Virginia and his war medals at his Barberton home.His wife said her husband over the years would break up when speaking of Pearl Harbor, but recently has started talking more about the attack.“He is more mellowed out,” she said.He said he seems to remember the day clearer now than in the past.“The older I get, the more it seems like yesterday,” he said.But December 7, 1941, was not the most important day of his life, McNeill said. The day of his marriage, he said, is his most important day.He believes he was saved and not killed on December 7, 1941, so that he could marry Helen.“I was spared for her,” he said. “I was damn lucky.”Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com. Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.