While prowling through a bottom drawer seldom opened, I found forgotten memorabilia from my teens. It’s really odd how things not thought of in years suddenly pop up. It happened to me a week ago and I’m still in awe over this life-time revelation.
It started with a small, yellowed pack of love letters from WWII, buried under old newspapers of the 1940s.
In 1943, while still in high school, I was seeing a 19-year-old Navy fellow. I met this handsome, dark-haired, blue-eyed boy through friends. My father was in the South Pacific, also Navy, and that is how our conversations started. After a few get-togethers, I invited him home for dinner. Mom really liked him and, as long as we were with friends, approved of my seeing him. Our dates, if you could call them that, were movies, roller skating or just sitting on the porch visiting.
Tom was sent to California for training in some type of radioman program. His letters every week proclaimed his crush on me. Tom knew eventually he would be sent to sea and the fellows all wanted a girl back home to write to.
After training, Tom came back to Seattle and we kept the friendship going. He came from a very devout Catholic family and they became worried about him becoming attached to a Protestant girl. He was pressured into vowing not to see me again. I was not a Catholic but was attending convent high school. I didn’t like public school where I had been transferred to when the family moved. Of course, I never heard from him again. The last I ever did hear was that he went to sea on a ship that was sunk in the South Pacific.
I had been looking for information on my father’s Navy Silver Star from Korea when I found the letters. Dad had been in both wars. For the curiosity of it, I put Tom’s name in the Internet research since he was Navy too. What a shock finding his obit and a picture of him older. He had survived the war and all these years I thought he was dead. It told of his wife who passed on earlier, 10 children and the business he had built. One couldn’t possibly imagine the thrill I got from reading this item. It was like a ghost from the past, almost like an old movie with a strange ending. Don would have gotten quite a kick out this whole event. I can hear him say, “Yeah, but I’m the lucky one. I got you!” Yes, Luv — so you did!
There was also one letter from Dad in 1943 answering mine telling him about my new friend, Tom. He gave me stern advice about not getting too involved at my age. And among old cards in an album from that era, I found a typeprinted Christmas card, with a picture of the USS Hornet aircraft carrier. It was sunk on Oct. 27, 1942, in the Santa Cruz Islands, South Pacific.
Inside the paper in gold: “Seasons Greetings from the Officers and Men of the USS Hornet.”
— Contact Jacque Thornton at jacquejt@centurytel.net
