OT: In Memoriam

If PCa hadn't gotten my Dad, he would have turned 96 today.
He was born July 16,1926, in Sanford, Maine. Graduated high school in 1944, joined the Navy. Went through boot camp in the fall and winter of 1944 at Sampson in upstate New York. Ended up being posted to Radio school, and was at Navy Pier in Chicago on VJ Day. Was discharged from the Navy in time to start college in the fall of 1946, at Northwestern University.

Sometime in the fall or winter of 1949 he met my mother in Chicago, they were married in 1952. They moved to PIttsburgh for graduate school at Carnegie Tech, and then moved on to Durham, NC for post-doctorate research--and he was involved in the early tobacco smoke toxins research.

My brother was born in Durham in 1956. In the summer of 1958, they moved to suburban Cleveland, where I was born, and he started his teaching career at Baldwin-Wallace College (now University).

He retired in 1993, about the time his PC showed up. He fought the good fight, and died October 17, 2004, at home.

That's my thoughts for today.

Not in the least off-topic.

I miss my Dad every day. He fought PC every day for 20 years (orchiectomy).

Eventually merkel cell carcinoma (a rare but deadly skin cancer) got him at 97.

Mel

ALWAYS THERE

When you remember me,
Please do not weep.
My body may not be there.
It has chosen to sleep.
I'm not that far away.
My soul lives on,
Looking down, watching over
You and everyone.
And when you feel sad
And life seems so blue,
Just remember
That my spirit has its arms around you.
And on those special days,
Times that you wish I could see,
That cool breeze flowing past you...
Well, that will be me,
So don't be sad.
Have no fear.
God has taken me under his wing,
But I'll always be near.
I still watch you
Every minute, every day.
My love and soul are with you,
And that's where they will stay.

-- Emma Marie Etwell

Like many men of his generation, I knew very little of his Navy experience until nearly the end of his life. He simply didn't talk about it.

His VJ day story was simple: They were in a classroom in the afternoon, and the CO walked in, and informed them that the Japs had surrendered. And then, he told them they all had immediate shore leave for 24 hours. They ran to the barracks, changed into their whites, and went to town. Within an hour there were a million people on the streets in the Loop. My mother apparently got permission to go into the Loop with friends (she would have been 16), and they figured out years later that they were probably on the same corner at the same time, but didn't meet for several years.

He was a radioman on a Gearing class Destroyer, in Shanghai in 1946. An untold bit of history is that the US Navy was heavily involved in the movement of Nationalist China to Formosa, and he had a piece of that duty.

When I asked him why he chose Navy, he laughed and said that HIS father (Cpl, USA, 27th Infantry, 10th Maine Artillery, Meuse-Argonne) said, "Join the Navy, you'll be clean"

Thanks Halbert!!
Although my dad didn't have PCa, he was one of many men of that generation that served this country!
So thank you for your dad's service.
My dad grew up in a very small NE Indiana town named Redkey or maybe Dunkirk. He quit school in the 8th grade to help feed the family, went on to join the CCC, and then he joined the Army in 1943 or 1944. In 44 he met my mother at a USO dance, and that was all she wrote. They were married for over 61 years before he passed away. Mom followed the following year.
I miss them both!