My dad was born in Missouri and grew up during the depression. In the 1930s everyone had it tough. His mother divorced his father and Dad put himself through high school working any job he could get, while renting a room from another relative. My aunt Virginia shared with her twin, my mother, that “I hate that Donald Doman.” I don’t know why, but I think they were in the same high school typing class at Nevada, MO. My dad could type up a storm.
I believe my father was learning bookkeeping in Kansas City when America entered World War II. Soon he was a merchant Marine out of Southern California on board ships that delivered oil to our naval ships in the South Pacific. On leave he returned to Nevada and married my mother.
My dad never really talked about the war. It wasn’t until the day or so before he died, that he mentioned standing on deck and watching Japanese torpedoes come straight towards his ship.
I was a teenager when my parents asked me if it would be okay with me if they had another child. Of course, I welcomed siblings. I don’t know why they thought they needed to ask. My wife Peggy and I never asked anyone. My sister Marsha came first followed by my sister Deedee.
Marsha eventually married Keith. Marsha died at the beginning of COVID. Keith never really warmed up to our family. He was the strangest person. In rearranging our house due to a flooding of three rooms in our basement, I found an envelope that Keith had given me just before he committed suicide some time ago, shortly after Marsha died.
The envelope contained Dad’s voyages mentioning a number of islands where thousands of our soldiers died like Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Tarawa and others as well as his home base at San Pedro in Southern California.
I was also able to follow the movements of my dad, and his return to Nevada to marry my mother and then my birth. After the war, my mom and dad left Nevada and planned to visit Tacoma, where my mother’s twin, Virgina, was living with her husband and my first cousin, Lavinia (Lindy), named after my mother. The plan was to move on to Southern California where my father had been stationed during the war, but there was no way the twins would be parted short of death.
I will read and re-read the information from the packet that Keith gave me before passing it along to our three children. If they don’t want to keep it I will hold on to it until I’m gone.
I understand. My mother never threw anything away. When she passed away in Portland, my task was to clear out the house. My father was disabled, so I gave him the task of reading the mountain of saved letters dating back to the thirties. He discovered letters from a previous serious beau, letters from her two brothers, each serving in the Pacific with the Navy. Their letters were written on extra thin paper, obviously been read by others as they were sometimes redacted. Both had their ships torpedoed out under them, but both rescued. Mountains of letters from two long life friends who wrote several times a week. I also found a shiny never used garbage can–it was full of cards and letters from Senator Jackson of Washington, other Senators of note and many short personal notes from the Nixon’s dating back to his California days. She spent her life keeping a spotless house and taking/reading various national periodicals and writing…writing to these politicians and her very special life-long friends.
My father said he learned more about our family than he ever knew before by reading those letters.
Sharing, seems to open up the world. I wish more people would do that. Thank you for sharing like material. Why keep material and not share it? I love stories like these that just reach out and connect . . . makes you want to laugh as much as cry.
Don
The first couple lines of your story caught my attention, as my late dad was also born in Missouri (Vienna, MO) in the 30s. How fortunate for you to have those written memories of your father’s time in the war.