Age 21. 8 Laredo Street, Roxbury (Boston), MA. Born (surname Goldenberg) on 10/19/1921, in Boston. Died of burns (death certificate). Private, U.S. Army, attached to the Army Signal Corps. At the club with his girlfriend, Miss Shirley Freedman, age 20 (Born 11/06/1922. Died as Shirley Freedman-Harris on 2/18/2001, age 78. Last residence San Diego, CA), of West Newton (Newton), MA, severely burned, but survived. Latter (as Mrs. Shirley Freedman-Harris) recalled in a 1994 newspaper interview (at age 72): "Lester and I were in the Melody Lounge downstairs. It was too dark, so we decided to leave" (The Boston Globe, 11/14/1994). Added that as Pvt. Gould went to get their checked coats flames appeared from the cellar lounge stairway. Miss Freeman was knocked over by a man leaving a foyer phone booth and never saw her date again. "First of the nearly 500 dead to be laid to rest was 21-year-old Lester Harold Gould..." (Boston Daily Record, 12/01/1942). Was single. Surname was shown as "Goldenberg" through the 1940 federal census, "Gould" as of '42 street listings and on his death certificate. Trim build (WWII draft registration, February '42: 5' 11," 165 lbs.). His companion was considered the second-worst-burned Grove survivor (after Seaman Clifford Johnson, U.S.C.G.R., age 21) with 2nd and 3rd-degree burns over 56% of her body. Mrs. Freeman-Harris made national news in 1994 when her adult son Jeffrey Bradford Harris, a United Airlines pilot, by chance co-piloted a flight with the son of her Grove physician, Dr. Bradford Cannon, for whom her son was named (wrote to still-living Dr. Cannon: "I am 72 years old today and still fascinated with the mystery of life!"). Parents Mr. and Mrs. Louis and Sarah E. (Selansky) Goldenberg, same address (parents' surname was unchanged). Burial the following Monday at Mount Lebanon (American Friendship Lodge) Cemetery, West Roxbury (Boston), MA, the earliest known interment of any Grove victim. Middle name Harold.

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