Tucked among the weathered headstones of Pleasant Grove Baptist Cemetery in Clarke County are two markers unlike most others on the grounds. Neither stands over a body. Both honor young men from the area who went to sea during World War II and never came home, their remains lost to the ocean along with the vessels that carried them.
The cemetery sits beside Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, a congregation established in 1858, and it holds generations of the same extended families, many of whom trace their roots directly to the two men remembered by these markers. The grave shelter that stands over part of the burial ground is one of only a handful still found anywhere in Clarke County, adding to the site’s significance as a piece of local history that has endured for well over a century.
A Merchant Marine Lost Off the Coast of Trinidad
One marker bears the name of Clarence Lowrey, a young man whose exact birthplace has been lost to time but whose family ties to Clarke County are unmistakable. His grandfather, father, mother and other relatives were all laid to rest at Pleasant Grove. After his father died while Lowrey was still a teenager, he moved with his mother to Mobile County, where he later signed on with the Merchant Marine, most likely around the time the United States entered World War II.
Lowrey began his service as a wiper, an entry-level position aboard ship that doubled as on-the-job training in basic seamanship. At just 19 years old, he was serving aboard the Alcoa Pilgrim, an unarmed cargo freighter making the run from Trinidad to Mobile, when a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the ship in May 1942. Of the 40 crew members aboard, 31 were lost, including both the captain and Lowrey himself. The attack came only about six months after the United States formally declared war, and local historians note that Lowrey may well have been Clarke County’s first casualty of the conflict, even though he served as a civilian mariner rather than as a member of the armed forces.
The handful of survivors scrambled onto two life rafts adrift in the Atlantic. In a moment that reflected the era’s uneasy adherence to the international rules of naval warfare, the German submarine surfaced alongside the rafts, and an officer questioned the survivors about the ship’s name, nationality, cargo and tonnage before submerging and leaving them to their fate. The men were not fired upon, a small mercy that meant more survivors lived to be found. Four days later, a passing merchant steamer spotted the rafts and carried the Alcoa Pilgrim survivors back to Trinidad. Lowrey’s body, however, was never recovered, and his marker at Pleasant Grove is believed to date to the late 1940s or early 1950s, placed by a family determined to give him a resting place even without remains to bury.
A Navy Seaman Lost in the South Pacific
The second marker honors Ray R. Jones, who grew up in Jackson and enlisted in the Navy in 1943. Jones was aboard the USS YO-159 on Jan. 14, 1944, when a Japanese submarine torpedoed the vessel near the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific. The ship, described as a small craft used primarily to ferry troops and supplies to beaches during amphibious operations, exploded, caught fire and sank. Jones, only 20 years old, was reportedly spotted afterward in a lifeboat wearing a life jacket, but he was never found. He was listed as missing in action and, two years later, was officially declared a casualty of the war.
Jones came from a family well known throughout the Jackson area. His brothers Billy and Troy Jones went on to operate popular drive-in restaurants in Jackson, local gathering spots that many longtime residents still remember fondly. Another brother, Ivan Jones, built a respected career as an educator and high school football coach in Foley, carrying the Jones family name into a different kind of community service on the other side of the region. Ray Jones’s marker at Pleasant Grove was placed by his family much more recently, in 2009, more than six decades after his death, ensuring his sacrifice would not be forgotten by younger generations.
Remembering Local Sacrifice Far From Home
Neither Lowrey nor Jones has a grave in the traditional sense, since the sea claimed both men along with so many of their shipmates. Their markers at Pleasant Grove Baptist Cemetery function instead as cenotaphs, memorials erected not over remains but in honor of the lives lost and the families left behind. For Clarke County, the two stones are a quiet but powerful reminder that the war reached far beyond the battlefields most often pictured in history books, touching small rural communities through their sons who served at sea, in the Merchant Marine and in the Navy alike.
As is the case in many small Southern communities, church cemeteries such as Pleasant Grove often double as informal archives of local history, preserving names, dates and family connections that might otherwise be lost. The markers for Clarence Lowrey and Ray Jones stand as lasting testimony to two young Clarke County men who never returned from the war, and to the families who made certain their names would not be forgotten.