a sailor's story

He was born in the first week of February...eighty-eight years ago, in the hills of West Virginia. His abusive father was a successful coal mine superintendent until he lost it all and died an alcoholic, alone in a hotel room, leaving my dad to pick up the pieces. His mom had left his father many years before, which in the 1930’s, took a woman with a whole lot of guts. She raised her four kids by becoming Post Master. My dad loved and admired her with his whole heart. His closest friend was a German Shepherd named "Lady". He worked, pumping gas, even filled up the tanks of John Dillinger and his goons on a cloudy day way back when.

He was shy, a loner, who liked to spend all his free time hunting and fishing. He joined the navy at 18 to escape the mines. It was on a ship, as a Gunners Mate, where he spent the next six years of his life. He saw a good friend burn alive right before his very eyes and swears it was only by the prayers of his beloved mother that he lived to speak about the war. On December 7th, 1941, he was on the Lexington, an aircraft carrier that had moved southward to help reinforce Midway when he heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor. They had pulled out of Oahu just a few days before.


Five months later, the Lex got torpedoed twice, followed by three bomb hits and then the gasoline vapors caught. It was there she burned until she sank..my dad jumping into the warm Coral Sea, with the sky exploding around him.

He met my mom when they were teenagers but didn’t make his move until he was visiting home, on leave. He stepped off the train, and saw her standing there, with “the prettiest, shiniest, blackest hair you ever saw”. They married at City Hall..he in his uniform and, her, in a mauve dress that I still have in a box in my closet. They had two kids and in the early 50’s, packed up the Chevy and moved west to California, welcomed by the fresh scent of orange blossoms and and all the dreams a young family can hold. They bought a brick home in Burbank for 18 thousand bucks. My dad became a tool-and-die maker and well into his 40's became a dad again when 'yours truly' came along. It was then they picked up stakes and moved eastward where they farmed, cattled, grew blackberries...even owned a boat dock in a small quiet cove where memories of swimming and skipping rocks are some of my sweetest. In 1999, he buried my brother who died at 49 of a drug overdose- the only time I ever saw my father cry.

He was diagnosed with bladder cancer a year ago last January. He had 8 chemos and 32 radiations without so much as a whimper. He never lost a hair, he never complained, and he always had a smile for the nurses.

He has loved my mom for 62 years. They live in a yellow house in the middle of the forest. It is there they will finish out their ordinary lives while listening to the laughter of their three grandchildren and one great grandchild. He's a veteran, he made it through, and he is my dad. I honor you today and always.