Jonathan West, a World War II veteran who was one of the first black Americans to serve in the Marines, died Wednesday in Bend, according to his daughter, Robin Gail Sims.

West died less than two months after receiving the Congressional Gold Medal on Aug. 30 at Stone Lodge retirement home in Bend.

West, 91, was among 370 surviving veterans of the Montford Point Marines to receive the medal, which recognized their service in the nation’s first black Marine unit.

The medal is the nation’s highest civilian award and the most distinguished award given by Congress, according to the Library of Congress.

Almost 20,000 black Marines trained in a segregated Marine camp in Montford Point, N.C. from 1942 to 1949 after President Roosevelt ordered the Marines to accept minorities into their ranks.

Before the war, West attended the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, working as a laboratory assistant under botanist George Washington Carver. Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he graduated and joined the Marines.

“Jonathan was a man of integrity and a history of service to the community in which he lived,” Sims said in an email sent on behalf of West’s family.

After training, West went with his unit to the Marshall Islands during the war. He was promoted to technical sergeant, overseeing 60 Marines and a machine shop that serviced ship parts.

His unit served for 2 1⁄2 years in the Marshall Islands during the war. After the war ended, he worked as a newspaper reporter at the Oakland Tribune in California.

With his engineering degree from Tuskegee, he also had a hand in helping with the design of the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine; worked on Project Gemini, NASA’s second manned spacecraft program; and assisted with the design work on the Hanford Nuclear Site in Richland, Wash.

In 1970, he moved to Eugene. He was personnel director at Lane Community College.

He also was the first black elected official in Lane County and the first black school board chairman for the Eugene School District, according to his family.

He is survived by his wife, Marjorie West, and daughters Marsha Harris, Sims, Karen Colonell and Wendy Schwarz.

Thinning ranks

The ranks of World War II veterans are shrinking with the passage of time.

Once a force of about 16 million, World War II veterans now number about 1.7 million, dying at the rate of about 740 a day, according to statistics compiled by the World War II Museum in New Orleans.

The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs estimates 32,100 veterans of the war resided in the state in 2010. That’s less than 10 percent of the 333,800 veterans estimated to live in Oregon in 2010, according to the ODVA.

Central Oregon Band of Brothers meets every Monday at Jake’s Diner in Bend, a gathering of veterans of all eras and first responders.

About 108 participants show up each week, with some 20 to 30 of them are World War II veterans, said Lyle Hicks, a Navy veteran. That experience has encouraged some of them to open up more about their wartime experiences, Hicks said

“They’re realizing it’s OK to talk about it,” he said. “It’s kind of therapeutic.”

At the same time, there’s an awareness that the firsthand stories of war and service from that era are fading.

“We lose them all the time,” he said. “I’ve went to far too many funerals.”