Frank Robbins Moran

Frank Robbins Moran was born on May 28, 1921, to Frank Goding Moran and Grace Robbins Moran. He had an older sister, Mary, and an older brother, Robert, who died in 1917 at the age of five. His grandfather was Moran Brothers shipbuilder and former Seattle Mayor Robert Moran, for whom Moran State Park on Orcas Island, Washington is named. Moran's father, Frank, Sr., established the Moran School for Boys on Bainbridge Island in 1914. It was a prep school developed to "educate the minds and develop the character" of the sons of Seattle's wealthy elite. Frank, Jr. was educated during his elementary years in Geneva, Switzerland, the Montezuma School in California, and the Moran School on Bainbridge Island. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in Seattle in 1939. His mother, Grace, died on December 2, 1939. His favorite sport was skiing, and his "keen interest" was boat building. His favorite spot was White Beach on Orcas Island; his favorite hymns were "I Would Be True" and "In the Garden"; his favorite verse was from Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette. 

Moran attended Washington State College (WSC) for one semester in the fall of 1939 as a business administration major. He transferred to Hillsdale College, a private, conservative liberal arts school in Michigan. His obituary later noted that he completed his education at Hillsdale, but it is unknown at this point if he graduated with his Bachelor's degree. Moran was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. After he left college, he worked at Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation and resided at his father's home in Seattle until he joined the Army in May 1942. Moran married Evelyn Cooke in Los Angeles on June 22, 1943, in the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church. Evelyn, from Healdsburg, California, was in L.A. taking a professional course in modeling and studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. 

Moran joined the Army in May 1942 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of infantry. He did his initial training in Camp Roberts, California. He later chose to join the paratroopers and trained at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was assigned to the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) was activated on July 20, 1942, at Fort Benning, with Lieutenant Colonel George V. Millett, Jr. given command. After jump-training at Fort Benning, the regiment and Moran deployed to the Army airbase at Alliance, Nebraska, and became part of the 1st Airborne Brigade. After arriving in Northern Ireland in December 1943, the 507th was attached to the 82nd Airborne along with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The 507th moved to Nottingham, England in March 1944 to prepare for the Allied invasion of Europe. The 507th, and Moran, first saw combat during the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. By this point, Moran was a First Lieutenant. Both the 507th and the 508 PIRs were to be dropped near the west bank of the Merderet River, with the objectives of both regiments to establish defensive positions in those areas and to prepare an attack westward sealing off the Cotentin Peninsula. According to an article published in his grandmother’s hometown newspaper in Valparaiso, Indiana, Moran became separated from his unit. Many of the troopers who jumped with heavy equipment were unable to swim free and drowned; others such as Moran roamed the countryside until they encountered other units. Even Colonel Millett, the commanding officer of the 507th was separated from his troops and captured three days after the drop in the vicinity of Amfreville. It is unknown how First Lieutenant Moran died, but all official records show he was killed in action on June 15, 1944, nine days after the D-Day invasion. Just two weeks and a few days earlier, on his twenty-third birthday, Moran’s only child, Linda Melanie, was born at Swedish Hospital in Seattle.

Moran is buried at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Colleville-Sur-Mer, Department du Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France, Plot I Row 8 Grave 31. His father, Frank, Sr., created a brochure entitled A Crucible of Faith that allowed him to reflect on his feelings about the loss of his remaining son. The elder Moran noted that he was President of the Seattle War Dads, a chapter of a national organization that began in Kansas City, Kansas in 1942. He wrote, “I have written many fathers who have faced this experience which is now mine. I have sought to assuage their grief with the assurance that there is a plan and purpose to life and that Personality is indestructible…Can I now hold to it as a truth?” He went on to note that he was not alone in his grief, for First Lieutenant Moran’s passing would “challenge the Faith of his only sister,” a First Sergeant in the Women’s Army Corps stationed at Fort Knox. The elder Moran wrote:

For forty-two days I was happy and active about my responsibilities, sustained by a deep reservoir of memories of fine association. I was conscious of the risks and dangers of a paratrooper. I was confident he would meet any issue with his face up and fulfill his responsibilities. With the death of his mother, we three had fused our philosophy on death…He loved life and lived it to the fullest. He was eager to establish his home and be with his wife and child. He had great plans for the future. He could face death unflinchingly because he believed in an ordered world of plan and purpose of an Author. Where and how this splendid personality is to function is beyond answer but for a certainty, it will carry on…To sustain me I will constantly draw on that unfailing resource of fine memories of intimate, shared associations of Son and Dad. Pity that father who, in his quest for material assets, has not stored up such a reservoir of fine memories for such an hour.

Evelyn Cooke Moran would move back to Northern California with Linda; she remarried and died in a car accident in 1971. Frank Robbins Moran is memorialized at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Washington, and the Washington State University Veterans Memorial.