Gravesite of Ralph Eugene Drumheller (1896-1983)

Ralph Eugene Drumheller served as a Yeoman (F) with the Supply Department, United States Naval Reserve Force (USNR), from September 1918 to July 1919. She was first assigned to perform clerical work at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, and was later transferred to work as a Storekeeper for Naval Storage at the Army Supply Base in Norfolk, Virginia.  Drumheller was discharged from her service as a Yeoman (F) with the USNR on 1 July 1919. Almost twenty-five years later, she would work for the USNR as a private citizen; first as a clerk, then a machine operator, and eventually as a welder. 

Born in Staunton, Virginia, on 23 August 1896, Ralph Eugene Drumheller was the eldest child of Thomas Perry Drumheller and Margaret “Maggie” Elizabeth Powell. Her father worked as a foundry laborer while her mother looked after Drumheller and the couple’s two other children, Powell and Margaret “Mamie” Drumheller. During her early twenties, Drumheller worked in downtown Roanoke, Virginia, on Jefferson Street as a clerk for Samuel Henry Kress & Co., a national chain of retail department stores. 

In September 1918, Drumheller enlisted to serve as a Yeoman (F) with the United States Navy Reserve (USNR). Drumheller served with the Supply Department of the USNR and was first assigned to perform clerical work for at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. In May 1919, she was transferred to Naval Storage at the Army Supply Base in Norfolk, Virginia, to work as a Storekeeper. In her new role, Drumheller would have been tasked with general bookkeeping duties as well as the procurement and issuing of equipment, tools, and consumable items for naval forces. Drumheller was discharged from her service as a Yeoman (F) with the USNR on 1 July 1919. 

After the war, Drumheller returned to clerical work in Roanoke and married her former sweetheart, Alfred Golden Howell. On 8 July 1926, the couple welcomed a baby girl, Julia Faye Howell. Following her husband’s death in 1942, Drumheller returned to the Hampton Roads area and began working as a private citizen for the USNR. For several years she worked as a clerk at the Naval Air Station (NAS) in Norfolk before eventually working as a machine operator and welder at NAS. During her retirement, Drumheller returned to Roanoke. 

On 21 May 1983, Drumheller passed away from congestive heart failure at the Salem Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Salem, Virginia and she is buried in the nearby Sherwood Burial Park cemetery alongside her husband. Her gravestone is adorned with the words, “U.S. Navy.” 

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