My original assignment to tell as much as I could about my brother, Sam, who died about 37 years ago, evolved into telling about myself, my parents and others, and how we interacted with each other as far as I could recall from my own experiences and as those experiences affected my brother Sam. But because of the interest of the younger generations of the family, I find it necessary to broaden my family history to include events of my own life in particular and of brothers and sisters generally who shared my life as children.

The reader must understand that the builders of my home were Victorian born and, therefore, they had very definite moral standards and beliefs and they expected their children to live by the example that was set for them. To them, words were cheap; and good and honest people did not need to profess those qualities of good citizenship that they embraced. I do not recall either of my parents using the word “love” yet they left no doubt in the minds of their children that they were loved, that they were cared for with the greatest of affection and loyalty.

I never once heard my parents speak angrily or disapprovingly one to the other. Airing their discontent in front of their children was not their style, but children have a way of sensing parental friction – and that was always an occasion for me to climb the tallest tree I could find to commune with the birds and lizards until I judged the storm had passed, for all of us boys believed that discretion was the better part of valor and none of us saw any virtue in challenging fate by hanging around at such times. Mother, I could always outrun, and she invariably would conveniently forget she owed you a whipping; but not my father. Running from him was never the thing to do.

As I have mentioned in earlier writing, I remember very little about Tim and Bill, my two oldest brothers. Although I am sure they did, I don’t remember their ever speaking to me yet I had this admiration for their handsomeness especially as they dressed for Church, or for some special occasion. I would peek around the corner at them as they shaved, applied their Bay Rum after-shave lotion, selected their ties, oiled, combed, and brushed their hair as the fashion of the day dictated. I feel sure these were times when Tim was home from Calabar High School for summer vacation and Bill had either finished, or was finishing, public school. And probably, too, they were at that age when young men thought mostly of young girls.

I have related my experiences with my brother Sam, and next in line was George, just three years my elder, and my experiences with him were much different. As a matter of fact, George seemed to be cast from a different mold from the rest of us. Except for the early years when my health was very poor and I slept in my parents’ room, George and I shared the same double bed at least until I was about nine and he went off to Calabar. At bedtime, father would read a scripture passage and give a short prayer after which we were required to go to bed. George invariably fell asleep almost immediately (it was unbelievable how quickly it was done). And like a hibernating bear, there was never a sound of his breathing, no movement of his diaphragm, no muscle movement, and in the morning he would be in the same posture and position he was in when he went to sleep, that is, on the nights I did not disturb his sleep. Now, I was just the opposite. I am a “ tosser” and practically every night I would roll into or on top of George which, of course, George tried his best to discourage with a few well-thrown jabs or slaps.

Two brothers could not have been more different. George was a very handsome boy and I was not. He was extroverted and I introverted. My childhood obsessions came from sensual things, but George’s must have been visionary and he marched to the beat of a different drummer. Very early in life George found great pleasure in reciting poetry, public speaking and debating and he was very good at them and at age 12 he left for Calabar, which, fortuitously, was the exact setting George needed for his development and education. The headmaster, Mr. Price, of Leeds, England encouraged attitudes and manners of aristocracy, which in turn were enforced by a curriculum that included the works of the literary giants of Greece and Rome and mostly Shakespeare of subsequent English literary supremacy. And George embraced them all with eager cupidity. At eighteen when he graduated, George was ready for the real world and went to work for The Canadian Bank of Commerce (I think this was perhaps the last and not the first bank George worked for in Kingston, Jamaica). He married Eileen Kennedy while employed there. But in a few years George realized the bank had no interest in promoting non-Canadians to executive positions and so he and Eileen came to Houston, Texas in 1948. After a few months of research on Houston and the banking industry of primarily southern United States, specifically in the field of foreign banking and commerce, George miraculously elicited an interview with Mr. Jesse Jones, President and majority owner of the Commerce Bank in Houston. Mr. Jones had not long retired from the Federal Government where he had served as Secretary Of Commerce and was so impressed by the research, presentation, and expertise of George, that he offered him the job of creating a Foreign Department for the bank. The net result was that George, by establishing correspondent relationships with the large international banks, particularly of London and Tokyo, advanced the recognition of his bank as a player on the world financial scene. With this exposure, George was well received in Tokyo financial circles and in London was privileged to be the guest of the Lord Mayor at his annual banquet. What Homer tells of Ulysses may also be said of George “Many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted”. George rose rapidly in rank and position and became a Vice President in a few years, but in 1963 he developed cancer and for some time afterward had to curtail his workload. Meanwhile Mr. Jones had died and the directors began a process of changing the direction and operation of the bank. This was followed by a series of acquisitions and the bank was itself acquired by Chase Manhattan which was subsequently acquired by J.P.Morgan to form the J.P.Morgan-Chase bank. George took early retirement. I knew my brother well, and though he retired with some resentment he was always rigorously loyal to his bank and, I believe, never once stepped outside the bounds of propriety he had been taught as a child.

Unlike George I had many talents of dubious respectability and worth; but with two of them I reached a very high level of proficiency and these were the games of cricket, and marksmanship with any kind of gun. My parents did not interfere with my playing cricket as long as I assumed responsibility for assigned chores. But we had no guns in our home and I reasonably assumed they would object to my using them as often as I did, especially had they been aware I was shooting cigarettes out of boys mouths (boys my age and just as stupid) with a Daisy BB gun. I did all my practicing with borrowed guns and kept them hidden (I assumed) from my parents. I later advanced to shooting a 22 rifle and a 22 long target pistol and it seemed quite easy to hit a target consistently with either. Later in the US army, my first time on the range for qualification from the first 3 positions of prone, sitting, and kneeling I placed all my shots into the heart of the bulls-eye. By that time though my shoulder had begun to get very sore and when it came time to shoot from the standing position it was very difficult to keep from flinching. The result was I missed the bulls-eye twice, but they were very near misses. My over-all record was good enough, however, for the sharpshooter award.

Back to the BB gun. In the 1920’s the Daisy gun barrel was hardened steel and machine- bored with the precision and tolerance as good as the army’s Springfield .03 rifle of 1941 that was in use until replaced by automatic and semi-automatic rifles after World War II began. In my youth, a Daisy cost probably less than $2.00 and it was more accurate than the Daisy you buy today for $100.00.

As for cricket, I will always remember the obsessive feeling that came over me the first time I held a brand-new cricket ball in my hands. Even though that must have been about 80 years ago, I can still smell the newness of a red cricket ball whenever I think of one. By the time I was about 14, I was absolutely certain I had achieved dominance over the ball, and the whole game of cricket as well, to the extent that when I walked on to a cricket field, I could feel the adrenalin pouring into my whole physical system so that I was no longer a kid but a prodigious giant, master of the game and killer of all opposition – and I was just that. There never was a doubt that I could do exactly what I wanted with a cricket ball. I often had visions of playing with the West Indian team against England at Lord’s in St. John’s Wood, London, England. But that accomplishment was not to be. It was a matter of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. I would not think this is the place to go into the details of the game of cricket, as it would be boring to the majority of readers. Suffice it to say that the distance between the batter and bowler (pitcher) is 66 feet, which is 6 feet further than it is in baseball.

Most of the cricket we played in West Bay was non-competitive, but at least twice annually we would play the Georgetown team alternating between Georgetown and West Bay. Whenever the governor of Jamaica (at that time in history Cayman was a dependency of Jamaica) would visit the island, he would come on a British warship and we would always invite the captain of the ship to a cricket match for his crew. The Cayman team would be drawn from the best players of Georgetown and West Bay. In the last inning of the last such match I played in, I took (struck out) all 10 wickets (hitting the wicket of the batter to create an out) and scored 45 runs in our inning (turn @ bat) which was more runs than the visiting team could manage all afternoon. I am sure it was just the ignorance of youth, but I never ever believed that I could miss the target with either a gun or a cricket ball.

ESCAPE:

It took some time for me to realize there was no reward for either of my talents in Cayman. And, beside that, I had no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. I also had a deep yearning for learning something other than what was available in Cayman, which, of course, left only one option and that was to migrate to the United States. But all the while I was dimly aware of this semi-dormant talent I had with numbers, which, while it was not of genius caliber, was quite good and allowed me to mentally compute relative values almost instantly so that I seldom needed reference to charts and graphs as an aid to the understanding of financial statements or investments etc. This talent of murky existence in youth was to serve me well in the professional field I was to choose later on in life.

SAILING THE HIGH SEAS:

There comes a time in everyone’s life when we wish we did not have to deal with conflicting emotions. In a way, I was excited to be leaving, yet I was sad the time had come to say goodbye to my father and Edith, my youngest sister. I am sure Doris, who was leaving with me, also felt the same way. Doris, incidentally, turned out to be a great trooper and traveler.

I do not remember what day of the month of June 1938 it was that we left Cayman, but it had to be somewhere around the middle of the month. Anyway, it was a hot afternoon that dad got Jacob Manson to take the whole family to Georgetown where we would board the “Goldfield”, a two-mast schooner. Later in the afternoon, the Goldfield was pulled away from the dock but there was not enough wind to fill her sails (go to “photos” on the web page to see the Goldfield leaving Georgetown). By nightfall it seemed we had scarcely moved, but providentially we finally reached deep water where we were caught by a current feeding into the Gulf Stream. As the days progressed, the severity of the calm increased to where in daylight hours not a ripple on the water could be seen, and the surface of the ocean glistened like one huge mirror. This went on for several days.

In daylight hours, a sailing ship is quite helpless if there is no wind but the danger magnifies during the night. Even though sailing ships carry navigational lights, they are comparatively small and lower to sea-level making them difficult to see from a taller ship. Our captain, Reginald Parsons, however had managed somehow to keep the ship under the lee of Cuba and out of the heavily traveled Gulf Stream. Then, one afternoon, the wind came up with a vengeance and the Goldfield was suddenly alive with activity and the sounds of the sea. There was the slip and slap of water as the ship spread her wings and slashed through waves already building. With beautiful elegance, Goldfield bore into the No’rwester, and the screaming of wind through riggings, the groans and moans of gear as wind stretched them almost to the breaking point, the beautiful sails straining to contain the wind, the starboard deck now awash as the Goldfield struggled to push water away and out of her path; the shouts of captain and crew as orders were given and answered in turn. Ah!! These were not the cacophonic sounds of protest against nature, rather they were the melody of a great Symphony of the Sea that has been sung repetitiously for hundreds of years whenever ships have ventured out upon the realm of Neptune.

TAMPA BAY REVISITED:

Here I am, finishing my tale of our journey to America on the Goldfield on the 66th anniversary of our arrival in Tampa, Florida. Today is June 27, 2004 and it was June 27, 1938 that Doris and I first set foot on U.S. soil.

The wind that had come up on the 25th off southwestern Cuba continued favorable throughout the night and into the next day and by morning of the 26th we were in the Gulf of Mexico bearing down on Tampa at approximately 15MPH. At approximately 9:00 PM, the lights of Ft. Myers appeared on the horizon. Of course I was awe-stricken as I had never seen anything like that before; but only moments later excitement turned to sadness as we were told Mrs. Alley had suffered a possible stroke. Mrs. Alley had been such a wonderful traveler. She was about 80 years of age and every evening she would sit on deck, weather permitting, and would talk and laugh with anyone who had a moment to spare or cared to listen. She was coming to America to be with her son. Just after midnight Mrs. Alley died. My sister Doris, just a teenager, was with Mrs. Alley from beginning to the end, and did what she could to help. I was proud of my sister, who became a woman that night. Next morning at dawn we had anchored off St. Petersburg, waiting for a pilot to take us up Tampa Bay to the dock at Ybor City. When the ship was securely tied up, Immigration Inspector C. B. Nelson came aboard did his questioning and inspection and we were released in what seemed less than hour. With a dead body aboard, I am thinking that if that had been today we would have been most fortunate to get away in a day. On the dock waiting to assist us was our uncle Calvin, our father’s brother. He got us settled into a boarding house and next morning put us on a train for Beaumont, Texas, Doris, myself and Ernest Lee Rivers who was also making his first trip to Port Arthur.

TEXAS TRAIN RIDE:

It was a Southern Pacific train we caught next morning. This was before the days of air conditioning so trains traveled with windows up in the summer and that meant there were times when we would get over-dosed with smoke. Nevertheless it was exciting for the three of us because it was our very first train ride. In those days most towns were built along railroad tracks and most of them had passenger stations which meant we had to make a lot of stops along the way, so the conductor was kept quite busy keeping passengers informed of where we were at different points in the journey. We were amused by the way he stretched his syllables as he loudly announced each approaching station, especially Paassscaagooollaa and Billlloxxeeeee. It seemed like when he was not announcing, he was walking up and down the aisles selling sandwiches and soda pop, so we probably gained some weight between Tampa and Beaumont, if that is biologically possible.

Next morning we arrived in Beaumont and Addie and Lois were waiting for us at the station. They drove us to Port Arthur. Later in the day, Addie drove Lee on to his boarding house to meet his father and that evening Bill and Sam with Doris and Verline came to welcome us to America.

Nineteen thirtyeight was not a good year economically for America, with Unemployment at around 25%. Bill was employed by The Texas Co.(now Texaco) and Sam by the Pure Oil Co. My sisters’ husbands, Sam and Vibert, were employed by Texaco and Sinclair and held the positions of captain and mate of oil tankers. America, and the whole world, had been in a very deep economic depression for the past 6 years. It was not until the Fall of 1939 that I found meaningful employment. World War II had broken out in Europe and the industrial effort in America to supply Britain and her allies as well as to rearm herself brought a sudden spurt of activity as workers were called back to old jobs, and new ones as they were created. The only employment open to me as an alien with no proven skills was to sail as a deckhand on the old Texaco tanker “Alabama”. But I was not a happy sailor and knew after the very first trip that the sea and I were not buddies and never would be. So when President Roosevelt instituted the draft call-up of young men for military service, I registered at the first opportunity and was notified in March 1941 that I was to report in late May for induction. At that time, draftees were to serve for one year, but Pearl Harbor intervened to make it “indefinite”.

I reported as instructed to the draft board in late May and spent the next few days taking several tests for physical and mental suitability then reported to the Beaumont induction center for transport to Houston where we received an Army serial number and provided the initial personal information for my individual Army Service Record. It was here also I think it was decided that I should be assigned to the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers. Later that evening I was taken to the railroad station along with what seemed to be at least two hundred other draftees for transport to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. But we had about an hour lay-over which gave me time to call my sister Lois who lived in Houston. I tried to discourage her from coming to the depot, but she came anyway. I’ll always remember the look on her face as we said our goodbyes. She told me after the war she felt she would never see me again.

I’ve never been able to sleep on a train and we traveled all night to arrive in San Antonio at around 5:00 AM the next morning where a convoy of trucks was waiting to take us to the fort. Our first stop was the Quartermaster Supply Store where we were issued our bedding, clothing, rifle, ammunition and whatever else we would need. We were then taken to a barracks where we were assigned a bed on which we temporarily unloaded everything and went for breakfast, and what an adventure that was. We had no sooner finished breakfast than we were lined up and marched to the infirmary for our inoculations –tetanus, smallpox, typhoid and yellow fever. Immediately following that, we were lined up again, but I was so exhausted by then that I deliberately went to the tail end of the line hoping I would get lost; but that was the very thing I should not have done as I could not hear what our sergeant was saying before we marched off again. It was a very slow line winding its way up stairs to the top floor crowded with GI’s. When I finally got to the top, a corporal handed me a paper and pencil and after a search found a seat for me in a closet with one other guy. I had noticed as I came to the head of the stairs that everyone was busy writing on the paper handed them and when I opened mine I realized it was an IQ test, but I had already lost quite a bit of time. And this was how I lost out going to officers’ training. I missed by 3 points. But in retrospect this could have been the very best thing that could have happened to me.

I spent two weeks at Fort Sam doing nothing but close-order drill, having the Articles of War read to us just about every other day and policing the grounds (picking up cigarette butts). This is known as basic training in the army, or I should say it was in pre-war1941. At the end of the two weeks we were sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri to join the 47th Engineer Regiment of the US Army. Here we learned to use our weapons and received some combat training, but somehow I was able to persuade headquarters I was best suited for administrative work and I was transferred to the Headquarters Section. After about three months we were shipped to Fort Ord, California where we did some more of the same stuff, but did not realize at the time we were being considered for service in the Philippine Islands. Later on, orders came for the regiment to sail for the Philippine Islands on December 8. All our equipment was on board ship on December 7 ready for departure next day when Pearl Harbor was bombed changing just about everybody’s plans for a long time to come.

WAR EXPERIENCE:

My regiment left early the next morning to board a troop transport in San Francisco, but when we got there the transport had not received orders to sail. We were told we had to wait until a convoy and escorts could be arranged which everyone suspected would take about two weeks (we were not on a war-time footing yet). We could not return to our barracks at Fort Ord as another unit had moved in as we left so we had to head for the hills at night in freezing rain and high wind to pitch our pup-tents in a cow pasture in the mountains above Frisco. That was a real fun night. I soon lost track of time but I think we finally received our travel orders around Christmas and headed out to sea, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. None of us GI’s had had a bath in two weeks, and since we were all smelling high by then, nobody knew the difference. By the time we got outside the harbor, as many of us as could manage it were in the shower room. But soap does not lather in salt water and we never did feel clean afterward, but I am sure it helped our body odor. It was a day later that we joined the convoy and about the third day out I came down with the mumps and was put in sickbay, and there I stayed until we reached Hawaii, not the Philippines as we had expected. I was taken off ship on a stretcher and driven to Tripler General Hospital at Fort Shafter in downtown Honolulu. I do not know exactly how much time I spent in the hospital. When you feel that you are “in for life” you don’t concern yourself very much with time, but it was longer than a week. Much of that time we spent under our cots because air-raid alarms were sounded several times a day. Everybody believed the Japanese would be returning to occupy the islands and marshal law was put into effect. Finally I was discharged (I discovered after the war the Army has no record of my illness or of my admittance to Tripler General) from the hospital and dispatched by Army transportation to my unit which was now stationed at Schofield Barracks in the mountains of Northwestern Oahu island, about 25 miles from Honolulu. This was when I got my first glimpse of the devastation the Japanese had inflicted on the island. It was not just Pearl Harbor that was mostly destroyed, but all the airfields were hit very hard also; runways were potholed and parts of airplanes caught on the ground were strewn everywhere. This was when I knew that the rumor was true. There was no Navy or Air Force to defend the island except 3 aircraft carriers that had been at sea on December 7. Tensions were high and anything that moved after curfew was shot and questions asked later, and air-raid alerts were sounded several times a day. This was the state of affairs until several weeks into the New Year when more troops were brought in and Navy and Air Force losses restored as best as was possible under the circumstances. The immediate effect on morale was quite obvious. Even Pearl Harbor was well on the way with a rebuilding program. Channels were cleared, ships raised and put on docks for repairs and those beyond repair were mostly hauled off for junk or left to sit on the bottom. But what a devastating sight Pearl Harbor was when I first saw it. The destruction was just appalling and as I looked out over what must have been a beautiful harbor before, I got the feeling that the Japanese would pay, and pay dearly for this terrible deed that took the lives of so many young men and destroyed almost all the Pacific Fleet as well as the Air Force there.

The vastness of the Pacific Theatre and the thousands of islands strewn across 6,000 miles of water required a different strategy of military operations from the European operations. Our Pacific Fleet had been wounded badly and it would be years away before being able to conduct any kind of frontal attack on Japan, but by combining all forces under a Central Pacific Command a plan to seize and hold selective islands was initiated. As the Army or Marines would take an island, the Corps of Engineers (later on assisted by the CB’s) moved in and built an airfield, and anything else required, which were calculated to strengthen the possibility of success for the next island assault. Many of the larger islands the Japanese had occupied illegally years before and had fortified them extensively, above and below ground, and had built their own airfields. This “island-hopping “ strategy resulted in cutting off Japanese supply lines to the bypassed islands. I give you this picture to help you understand what happened to me.

When the decision was made to combine all forces into a single unified Central Pacific Base Command it meant dissolution of the 47th Engineer Regiment into small specialty teams that would serve each island invasion in a way most effective for support. For instance, if there was need to remove underwater obstacles before troops could land then Engineer divers were first to go in. Another group would go in last to build the airfield, or to man searchlights at night etc while others might be engaged in the building of camps etc. but there was always a need for engineering services.

The Headquarters Company of the 47th Engineer Regiment to which I belonged was assigned to the CPBC. This placed us in command of all Engineers in the Central Pacific and not just the 47th Regiment, and our commanding officer was General Kramer who was also on the Military Command Staff of the CPBC. It was the primary function of the Engineer Section of CPBC to see that adequate supplies were on hand at all times and combat readiness maintained by the Engineer Corps.

What I have written about my Army service sounds more like it was just of two months duration but I was in for 4 years and 4 months, and my duties and experiences were varied in that time. When I returned to my regiment from hospitalization I returned to the records and payroll section of the Headquarters Unit. At that time my rank was Corporal. But I was not exempt from guard duty and defense deployment which entailed “ hitting the trenches” night and day which was quite intense until our forces went on the offensive. Once my regiment was dissolved, the Headquarters Company of our regiment to which I belonged was assigned to CPBase Command which was located at Fort Shafter. Later on we were billeted at Punahou College campus. Punahou I was told was established by missionaries and was the oldest institute of learning west of the Mississippi. At the time, the college was closed and I do not believe it ever reopened. I had been promoted to Sergeant at Fort Shafter and at about a year later at Punahou I was made Tech Sergeant and my primary duty now was supervision of the message center. All correspondence from, to or through the Corps of Engineers had to clear through my desk. It was my duty to see that there was no violation of the chain of command and all correspondence was properly classified in accordance with standard regulations. There were four classifications, Classified, Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. None of our officers gave me any problem but one, a major who had been an attorney prior to his commission and thought himself so superior that he could intimidate me. He became a real sorehead after I had him up before the Colonel, who was a West Pointer with a very low tolerance for troublesome and disruptive appointed officers. This Major, who shall remain nameless, thought he was clever in getting back at me when he recommended the whole Headquarters Company for the good-conduct medal except myself, and required me to attend. I did not say it to him but I let it be known I thought it was ridiculous for soldiers who put on a uniform to kill should now be treated as Boy Scouts. Some months later though, the medal came to me and since I do not remember how, I can only assume some officer noticed that my records did not indicate I received one and sent it forward.

I am also the recipient of the Soldiers Medal for Bravery. This is something I would rather leave out of my early life’s history. It was not combat related, but very nightmarish just the same. During a swimming training exercise in combat uniform (steel helmet, full field pack and army boots) I heard my name called in desperation for help. I don’t know why this soldier called me when he was swimming with a buddy and there were others just as close but anyway he did and that was that. After struggling with the man both above and below the water I managed to get the only lifebelt the Company had around him. I continued on with the swimming but I was soon in very serious difficulty. When I came up for the third and last time a rope hit me in the face. Two sailors in a passing boat had seen my difficulty and had come to my rescue. But that seems to be quite normal for me. I can name you a half-dozen times or more that I came just as close to death. In sober retrospect, it would seem like a very unwise thing I did but I also understood that the only friend you have in war time is the GI next to you and you will do anything to protect him and he you. I tell you this only because of my anger with John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States for the disrespect he has shown for the medals he received in the Vietnam War (could it be as his critics are insinuating? That he did not earn them?). I can tell you that from my own experience that is not so farfetched. When the war began winding down, most of the correspondence crossing my desk was for war service commendations, one non-combat officer recommending another non-combat officer for anything and everything available to them other than the Purple Heart and the Medal of Honor. But even those could possibly, though with some difficulties, be obtained in a small, contained unit such as a PT Boat where the commander and crew were known to each other previously or the commander domineered his crew totally. Even if my suspicions are totally erroneous, one has to ask oneself why the man volunteered if he hated the military so much, and lied about the behavior of our troops in Vietnam, toured the country with Jane Fonda, and voted against every military bill coming before Congress. Also, he is the first and only war hero I know of who boasted of his heroism and shamelessly threw his medals back in the face of his countrymen who he now asks to consider him for the position of their Commander In Chief. Is there any wonder he is such a flip flopper? And where does honor, integrity and loyalty stand among the “values” he is campaigning on?

HOMEWARD BOUND:

With the end of hostilities in Europe in May 1945, the effort against Japan was intensified. General McArthur and his army had returned to the Phillippines, Okinawa invaded, and Command activities were shifting to the western Pacific and away from Hawaii. Our office was definitely showing a slowdown in its support requirements and we were momentarily expecting orders to also move to a more forward position when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan and in just a few days we were all adding up our points to see when we would be going home. The good news came much sooner than I had expected and on September 16 I boarded a troop transport for home via Fort Sam Houston Separation Center. Had to spend a few days at the Fort for records to catch up, termination pay to be computed, and discharge certification issued. On October 1, 1945 with my pay and separation package in hand I saluted, said goodbye to the army and caught the next train East Bound. I spent a few days at Addie’s, visited family and friends and with the help of my brother Sam I got enrolled at Lamar Junior College. With this behind me, I could now try to find a way to go to Cayman to see my dad. Edith had come to America in 1943 with dad and was now working and staying at Addie’s home. When I left Cayman in 1938 she was just a skinny little girl and now she was a very beautiful young woman. I was so surprised to see such change. Of course dad had returned to our home in Cayman and he was now in very poor health. I have wished many times I had spent more time with him but I was under immense pressure to get everything done that needed doing. I had no idea how I would get to Cayman, except I knew for certain it had to be through Florida; I had promised George to visit him in Jamaica and I had to be back for the first semester at Lamar the first week of January. So off I went for Tampa, Florida by way of Mobile, Alabama where Tim and his family lived. Stayed there a few days then headed on for Tampa only to find there were no ships from Cayman there and no one knew of any bookings anytime soon. Then I remembered hearing there was a US Navy airbase at Cayman, built during the war, and there were regular flights out of Miami to the island. So off to Miami I go but was told by the base commander that he was not permitted to carry civilians. Now I am really faced with a dilemma. With time running out rapidly I had to find a way out soon. I don’t recall how it happened, but I met up somehow with two Caymanians I knew very well. They were Douglas Hydes and Jim Henning. Imagine my surprise when they told me the “Wilson” (sister ship to the Goldfield) was in Key West and would be sailing for Cayman in the morning. Jim had already called the bus station for the schedule to Key West and since he was going out to the island himself we caught the bus the early part of the night and we arrived in Key West shortly after dawn. We rushed to the docks, found the captain, Captain Allie Ebanks, who took us on board and we were under way shortly after 9:00 AM. This time the trip would be a dream compared to the one in 1938. We had a strong tail wind all the way and about 40 hours later the captain gave the order to “heave-to” into the wind and the vessel was held there with listless sails and when dawn broke we were less than a mile from land at Northwest Point. I asked captain Allie how he knew in pitch dark where he was and this is what he told me: Cayman sailors had learned long ago that sailing ships approaching the island experienced a sudden change in the rhythm of the sea. Instead of the motion of the sea following laterally with the wind, wherever very deep water meets very shallow water, as in Cayman, the vertical movement of the water is usually stronger and the ship will move more up and down than side to side as it approaches the shelf of shallower water. All the while captain Allie was telling me this, the Wilson was already on the way to Georgetown. We dropped anchor before 7:00 AM but had to wait on the pleasure of Mr. Ernest Panton, the Customs and Immigration Officer, who arrived on deck at approximately 9:30. We were cleared promptly, and we were on our way to West Bay and when the taxi stopped in front of our home dad was already waiting at the gate for me. There was already a lump in my throat, but when I saw this sick man looking happier than I had ever seen him, that lump grew several times larger and we hugged and shed a few tears. I had left home a boy and had returned a man, and this man had learned from that man, my father, and my mother also, the lesson that life is more than the world perceives it to be.

Helen, my stepmother, met me at the front door and welcomed me home. Although I had been gone seven years, many of the old familiar sights and sounds came flooding back to my consciousness and when a break in our conversation came I lifted my suitcase and asked dad if I could have the use of my old room and he consented. It was the same old room I remembered so well but much smaller now and there was my old spring bed but also much smaller now too. The landscape around the house had changed also. There was an absence of fruit trees and flowering plants and trees and mostly there was an untidy appearance about the yard which was understandable because of dad’s illness. He still managed to go to the store every day though and I would spend most of the day there with him. Time ran swiftly and before I knew it two weeks had passed and the Webster steamship “Husvik” was stopping in at Cayman on its way to Jamaica. George had begged me to pay him a visit and I knew I would not be able to do so unless I caught the Husvik. I asked dad to come with me so he could get better medical help but he would not hear of it. Of course the medical profession did not know a whole lot about heart disease in 1945 and I believe dad felt the trip would be too difficult for him. It was very sad saying goodbye to my father knowing it would be the last time I would be saying goodbye to him. Eleven months later he passed away.

George and Eileen were waiting on the dock when the Husvik docked in Kingston harbor and I’ve related previously the humor of the occasion. Visited with George and Eileen and the Kennedy family a few days. George confided in me that he wanted to emigrate to the United States and he would need a sponsor and would I take care of it when I returned to Texas. This I arranged through my brother-in-law Sam Parsons. They visited the Texas family in the Spring of 1946 and emigrated in 1948.

A NEW DIRECTION TO MY LIFE:

I flew out of Kingston on a Pan American plane to Miami and next day caught a train to Texas. There was mail waiting for me, rejection notifications from various universities because I could not meet the educational entrance requirements, job offers etc., but since I had been promised acceptance at Lamar, I was not too disappointed that other institutions had rejected me. As quickly as possible I met with the Registrar, Celeste Kitchen, to work out my first semester schedule. She made me to understand that it would be a conditional acceptance and if I failed just one subject I would be given a failing grade on all and dismissed by the school. I thanked her for her kindness, all the while keeping my fingers crossed. It was during the first semester that my English Professor recommended I should change my major from Business Administration to Journalism which advice I did not follow of course. Anyway the professor was very complimentary and helpful. It was also at Lamar I met Dorothy who had already graduated and was employed as secretary to the president. We were married at the end of the second semester, December 20, 1946. By going to Summer Semesters for both years I was able to complete the Sophomore Year in May of 1947 and in September enrolled at the University of Texas, Austin, Texas. With the support of Dorothy I was able to finish at U. of Texas and was graduated in May of 1949. Went to work for The Texas Company (Texaco) almost immediately as a traveling auditor and remained in that capacity until January of 1951 when I was re-assigned to the Comptroller’s Office in Houston. Meanwhile our son, Bruce, was born in Beaumont (Dorothy’s hometown) September 22, 1950. We purchased our first home in Houston a very short time after our first daughter, Claire, was born on November 26, 1952. I went to work for an accounting firm in Houston in 1953 and passed the Certified Public Accountant’s examination the same year. The next year I joined my brother Tim, who had received his certification before I did and had opened an office in Orange, Texas. Tim moved to Alabama in 1955. I stayed and we have been here ever since. Orange has been our home for 50 years and it has been very good to us.

This is where my effort to write a limited history of my family ends. I did not start out to write a biographical sketch, but only to write short stories of this and that. Hopefully some family member will come along to rearrange and re-write the stories to make them more inclusive, coordinated and more readable. All my brothers did exceptionally well in their professions. Tim had his own CPA office in Birmingham as I had mine in Orange. Bill was office manager and chief assistant to the Vice President of Purchasing of Texaco. Sam at the time of his death had his own independent insurance agency that was then growing phenomenally. Tomorrow is my 86th birthday and I am finishing this so I can send it out in the morning after doing a bit of proof reading tonight. So I will say my “goodbyes” now. But before signing off, I want to thank everyone for their help and encouragement, especially Lynda and Susan who made this contribution to family history possible.

WALTER

July 16, 2004

7/17/04
11:00AM
End of Installment Sixteen