The Non-Father’s Day Post

This is my dad, circa 1944. He quit high school shortly after his 17th birthday in February 1944 to join the Navy. He served aboard a sea-going tug in the Aleutian Islands.

He never talked much about his service, just a few tidbits about the year they had two Christmases (one in Russia and one in US waters), or the time he made it back to the ship after shore leave… He is most definitely not one of those veterans who obsess about the service or the war. But we’ve talked about it a bit lately, because I had to find his discharge papers for some of the bureaucratic crap.

So he told me yesterday that he got on the Sarsi somewhat by accident. He’d signed on to an Atlantic ship; happened to be on shore leave in the West when Sarsi needed a mechanic and he wanted a mechanic’s berth. So he became a boilerman (Fireman 2C, according to his papers) and cook’s helper. And gunner.

He also said that a young woman in Philadelphia thought he was going to marry her. He was about 17 at the time, 6' 2" tall, with wavy auburn hair and clear blue eyes. Can you blame her?