A.M. 'Hambone' Larsen Jr.

VALDOSTA — For decades, A.M. “Hambone” Larsen Jr. was known as a dedicated veteran, a storyteller, a volunteer and one of South Georgia’s few witnesses to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In October 2003, Larsen died at the age of 88 at the residence where he had lived since returning home from World War II, a house that was only a block from where he was born Dec. 14, 1914, to A.M. Larsen Sr. and Florence Forbes Larsen.

Larsen grew up in Valdosta where he worked, as a boy, at his father’s store, Larsen’s Grocery. Through the years, everyone came to know him as “Hambone,” his real name was Androckles Marius Larsen Jr.

In a 2001 interview with The Valdosta Daily Times, Larsen said a high school football coach gave him the name “Hambone” in 1927.

Legend also claimed Larsen received the nickname as a boy in his father’s store, where the bone was saved for soups after a ham was trimmed. Since it was his job to get the hambone, the name stuck.

On July 10, 1941, Larsen enlisted in the Army. Assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers, he received what seemed like a plum assignment for a 27-year-old man. He was stationed at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor.

In a May 27, 2001, article, Larsen recalled his memories from the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

“I was washing my hands, getting ready to go down to Waikiki, when I heard these (Japanese) planes,” Larsen said. “We didn’t know what it was. We went to the back door and the (Japanese) planes were strafing the field. There was nothing we could do but stand back and watch them.

“But I was scared. You ever hear the phrase ‘scared s—less’? Well, that’s what I was. We just stood there watching, scared to death. If anybody ever tells you they were there and wasn’t scared, well, they wasn’t there.”

As the United States entered World War II, Larsen was assigned to numerous locations in the Pacific Theater, including bloody Okinawa.

“I asked the good Lord, in Okinawa, to let me get back home and I wouldn’t bother with any more of these foreign places,” he said.

On Sept. 22, 1945, Larsen’s prayers were answered.

With the war over, he returned home to Valdosta. And he kept his word, he never traveled abroad again.

Home after four years and two months of war, Larsen returned to his father’s grocery store. Two weeks after coming home, he married. “Hambone” and wife Willie Larsen had two sons, Andy and Thurman.

In Valdosta, he took over Larsen’s Grocery, running it until his retirement in the late 1970s. He became active in Azalea Masonic Lodge, the Knights of Columbus, the Shriners, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Elks Club, the American Legion and Christ Episcopal Church.

Through the years, he portrayed Santa Claus in local Christmas parades and, even when age left him using an electric wheelchair, he continued his habit of handing out hard candy to everyone. Though he kept a positive attitude, even after the death of his son, Andy, and the February 2001 loss of his wife, Willie, Larsen often shared his experiences in World War II and Pearl Harbor.

In May 2001, Larsen prophetically noted that Americans needed to realize an attack such as Pearl Harbor could happen again.

“We never saw it coming,” he said. “We believed we were safe, and we were wrong. People need to know that.”

Less than four months after the comment, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.