Auburndale’s Robert “Honey Pop” Taylor, the Last Living Survivor of the USS Yorktown turns 102
AUBURNDALE, Fla. The first person who told Robert E. Taylor not to go to war was his mother.
He was 17 years old, living in Jacksonville, and he needed her signature to enlist. Even though she was not happy about it, she signed anyway, and on Sept. 12, 1941, three months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Taylor joined the U.S. Navy.
Taylor turned 102 on Monday at his home in Auburndale, where he moved for retirement. He is the last living survivor of the USS Yorktown, the aircraft carrier that absorbed the Japanese counterattack at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and went down three days later. Of the roughly 4,600 men who served aboard her, the only other survivor still living, the Rev. Julian Hodges of Johnson City, Tennessee, died in September 2024 at 101. Taylor’s daughter-in-law, Joi Taylor, confirmed to The Citrus Tea news that he is now the sole surviving member of the crew.
Taylor manned an anti-aircraft gun during the battle. What he remembers most is not the gun.
He remembers the water.
The USS Yorktown was sinking sharply on one side and they knew they had a better chance of survival away from the ship and a sure grave at the bottom of the sea. Taylor’s best friend, still alive but wounded as men were fleeing the ship, called out to him for help. Taylor tried to reach out to him, but was ordered to leave the vessel, and that meant leaving his best friend behind. As he was climbing down the ladder, the man above him kept kicking him in the face. The crewmate’s hands were so burned that he couldn’t hold on. Taylor took him on his back and carried him down the ladder to the water. Another man couldn’t swim. Taylor gave him the life jacket he was wearing and started treading water.
A smaller boat full of men saw him and tried to throw a line to save him, but missed. In one last attempt before being forced to move on, they threw a lead line, a line that measures water depth, toward him. It was too far away to catch with his hands, but he stuck out his leg and caught the line with his left big toe. Several men grabbed him on his back as they were pulled in by the last boat that could take them all to safety.
In the harrowing moments before being rescued, Taylor made a promise.
“If God brings me through this, I will give Him my life.”
He kept that promise. Men on the ship had been talking to him about Christianity, something he said he didn’t need in his life at the time. When the battle was over, he was baptized in Waikiki. He wanted to become a preacher and was given an honorary chaplain’s patch, something he still speaks about with pride and hangs just under his rank patch on the wall. He never preached in a pulpit, but he has faithfully served God every day since.
The life he went home to has been filled with hard work, faith, and family. He married his wife, Shirley at 24, and they were married 75 years before she passed away.
Taylor was serving in South America when the war ended. The Navy told him that if he stayed in for another term, they would promote him to the next rate. Now that the war was over, he decided he was ready to go home. He enrolled in college to study engineering, then went to work in sales for the ITT Corporation, becoming one of its top salesmen.
He shared with The Citrus Tea News about the time his company sent him to Las Vegas.
And that is where Frank Sinatra asked him what time it was.
Taylor’s family had never heard that story until Monday, but he grinned the whole way through it.
His son Mark Taylor has said publicly that his father carried the memory of the best friend he left behind since that fateful day, and that post-traumatic stress followed him home from the Pacific. Taylor’s answer to it was the promise he made in the water. His faith is the thread that takes a 17-year-old on a sinking aircraft carrier to a 102-year-old in Polk County who still attends church every Sunday.
He has never accepted the word hero. Last year, he said that the heroes are all dead, and that he was just proud to be an American and to do his part. But the man who wore Taylor’s life jacket, and the others who held on as they were carried or pulled to safety by this American might have had something different to say about that.
This year, his family and community celebrated him in a big way. They came to Auburndale to shake his hand, to sit with him and to tell him what he has meant.
Among the gifts was an original commerative watercolor (pictured below), hand-painted by Citrus Tea News Editor Becky McLachlan to honor his service at the Battle of Midway. It carries his rank as an Electrician’s Mate 3rd Class, a model of the USS Yorktown, and the patch of his ship. He recognized the insigia immediately.
The house had a large bouquet balloons, cards and cookies from his birthday celebration on Saturday. Taylor said it was the best birthday he has ever had. He said he could not believe how many people came to honor him. He did not feel he deserved it and it made him feel special.
Almost eighty-five years ago, a mother in Jacksonville did not want to send her middle son off to war. Today, Polk County honors a hero who gave up a life jacket and saved men with his big toe.
Disclosure: The watercolor painting presented to Mr. Taylor was created and given by Becky McLachlan, Editor of The Citrus Tea News, who conducted this interview.
Sources: Interview with Robert E. Taylor, Auburndale, Fla., August 31, 2026; Interview with Joi Taylor, Auburndale, Fla., August 31, 2026; “World War II Veteran, Remaining Survivor of U.S.S. Yorktown to Celebrate 101st Birthday in Polk County,” FOX 13 Tampa Bay, fox13news.com, August 30, 2025; “Julian Eugene ‘Gene’ Hodges,” Morris-Baker Funeral Home and Cremation Services, morrisbaker.com, September 6, 2024
