About Tyree: From Marine to Professional Artist

About Tyree: From the US Marine Corps to a Professional Artist

Ralph Burke Tyree returned from the island of Samoa and the World War II battle front in April of 1944. He was now a corporal in the US Marine Corps, the highest rank he would achieve. He was first stationed at Camp Elliot, then the Marine Corps Depot in San Diego and finally to the Marine base at Camp Pendleton, near Oceanside, California. There as the resident artist and still working for his old friend General Charles Price he would paint a large rendition of the flag raising on Iwo Jima just months after that horrific battle took place in February 1945.

Tyree and Margo would continue their long romance after being separate for years. He had showered her with pencil and watercolor paintings (“ten thousand word” love letters) twice monthly while on Samoa and then from San Diego bases. He married his high school sweetheart Margo on June 27, 1945.

The war of the Pacific with Japan would end in early August 1945 with the dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tyree and his new bride would remain in the Oceanside area near his Marine Camp until being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps on January 24, 1946. He could now get on with a career as an artist and begin raising a family. The travels to the South Pacific and all the “practice” portrait work of painting officers and their loved ones would propel him into his professional career as a superb portrait artist of the South Pacific peoples.

Read about Tyree’s middle years in the Marine Corps here.

Read more about about Tyree: A Marine and Artist.

And read about his early years here.

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