Lt. Alexander (Sandy) Nininger, Jr., a graduate of Fort Lauderdale High School (1937) and West Point (1941), was killed in action January 12, 1942 on Bataan, a little more than six weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack.
For his valor in attempting to thwart a Japanese assault, Nininger was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first of World War II. Nininger was laid to rest in a church cemetery at Abucai, Province of Bataan, the Philippines.
Nininger had been an honor student and star football player at Fort Lauderdale High. His father, Alexander R. Nininger, Sr., once manager at the Sunset Theater and later a theater in Lake Worth, said Sandy decided when he was 11 years old that he wanted to attend West Point.
"He never quit anything he started," said Nininger, Sr. while awaiting the medal to be posthumously awarded in 1942. It was an honor recommended by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Sandy was invited to a Rotary Club meeting in Fort Lauderdale months before he died. There, he explained he volunteered for service in the Philippines because it offered "the best opportunity for an officer eager for action and hard work."
He also volunteered for the battle that ended his life. His body was found well within Japanese lines with those of a Japanese officer and two enemy soldiers. He had been wounded three times.
Among many tributes was the naming of a drive off Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale to the War Memorial Auditorium as “Sandy Nininger Drive,” and the establishment by the Kiwanis Club of the "Sandy Nininger Medal" to honor high school students who have made the most of their opportunities.
Official site of the Congressional Medal of Honor: www.cmohs.org
Read these links about his burial controversy:
Sources:
Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 29, 1942
Fort Lauderdale News, Jan 30, 1942
Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).
Weidling, Philip J. , Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).
