Glimpses from Life's Other Side: An Autobiography

Glimpses from

Life’s Other Side

An Autobiography

By

Richard Lee

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© 2012 by Richard Lee. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 07/16/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-6450-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-6449-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-6448-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012904875

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Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. My Family History

2. My Early Years

3. Black Bird Island

4. On The Fox River

5. Chicago’s Southside Suburbs

6. Geat Lakes Naval Training Center

7. The East Coast

8. The Illinois State Capital

9. Moving To California

10. Boot Camp

11. My First Ship

12. The Winston

13. Shore Duty

14. Gunnery School

15. The Mahan

16. The Reasoner

17. Back to Boot Camp

18. Adjusting To Civilian Life

19. Civilian Working Years

20. The Golden Years

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to my Wife, and family past, present, and future generations to come.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge my wife Nancy for her assistance in the self editing of this work.

I want to acknowledge my brother-in-law and sister-in-law Loy and Marilyn Beckett for technical computer advice while writing this.

I would also like to thank Richard Pierce, a former shipmate of mine on the Winston for providing some of the pictures that went into this volume.

Glimpses from Life’s Other Side

An Autobiography by Richard Lee

Introduction

This book is something I have been considering writing for many years now. It describes a lifetime of experiences, good times and bad. Overall there were more good times. The hard times were often difficult to write about, but without them there would be nothing with which to compare the good.

A person cannot live without enjoying life and the humor that goes along with it. If you’re a person who does not enjoy a good laugh, read no further, for I had a number of funny stories to tell. They are all from real life and most could not have been made up if I had wanted to; sometimes the experiences of real life are just funnier.

I started my book with the generation before me, the one we now call the greatest generation. I felt there was a lot to learn from them, a lot of experience and some humor too. There were a few things in the first chapter I wanted to make sure got passed on, to future generations. That chapter also tells something about the conservative values instilled in me growing up and may help to explain who I am, and why.

The rest of the book takes my reader from my earliest memories to present-day, with experience, laughter, and heartache along the way. It is mostly humor and good times as I have enjoyed my life as much as possible.

I have lived in ten of our fifty states and traveled or visited all but three of them. I am grateful to have had the chance to see the many places I have seen in my lifetime; but I am thankful to have been born in the United States, the greatest country on this earth. I have visited a lot of other countries but none that I have found even come close in comparison to this great nation of ours.

As well as growing up a navy brat, this book spans my own 20 year career in the Navy in peace-time and war. It also tells of raising five sons. I hope it brings a few laughs to my readers and they learn something from my experience as well.

Chapter 1

My Family History

I can’t envision telling my story without first telling some of the history of my family; to illustrate who I am, and how I came to be the person I am today. During my lifetime I have been fortunate, to have been surrounded by family members, who ameliorate those around them. In addition to that, there is no way I would be here at all without family.

On my mother’s side I inherited Native American blood. My mother was half Cherokee, as her father was full blooded. My mother’s maiden name was Lowe, pronounced differently than most families with the name would pronounce it.The (E) is silent, and the (O) has the same sound the (O), would have in the word cow.

My mother grew up on a farm where she learned a lot about life, even though she only went through the 6th grade. She would tell me about her first job, where she ironed clothes all day for 9 cents an hour. I think the primary reason she told me that story, was to emphasize the importance of a dollar. She read a lot, balanced her check book, and never seemed to be hindered in any way by not having had more formal education. She took care of paying all of the bills for our household and was over all a very good manager. She knew how to stretch a dollar and was an excellent cook.

My grandpa Lowe was a farmer in southeastern Missouri, and I have no knowledge of where he may have come from as a young man, or of his ancestors. If my mother knew any of that information she did not share it with me, and I never thought to ask, as a child or in my later life. She would, I am sure, have been more than willing to discuss the matter, if only I had asked. She is gone now, as is her entire generation. So there is no one from whom, I could make an enquiry in regard to this topic.

I came to know my grandma Lowe very well before she passed away; visiting her house many times when I was growing up. I did however, know her by the last name of Bunch. She had remarried sometime between the early 1930’s when my mother’s dad passed and the period at which my memory evolved. I do believe however, that this union took place sometime after the Second World War.

My grandma and grandpa Bunch had a small house on the outskirts of Kennett. Mo. The first time I can remember going there I was six or seven years old. The only bathroom facility they had was the outhouse. It was located about twenty-five yards behind the main house. I can recall the cold wind blowing through the cracks in the boards on a frosty morning. There was no lighting inside of it; so if it was dark you had to carry a flashlight, when using the accommodations. During daylight hours, the light would come through the cracks in the boards. There was seating for two with the holes cut out of the bench like seat, but it would be best to know the other person, as it was close quarters and there was no privacy.

The house could not have been more than eight or nine hundred square feet. It had only a living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms, all very compact. The building sat up on concrete supports with a crawl space underneath. Their heating system was a pot bellied stove in the living room. They burned coal in it instead of wood as there was a large pile of it in the yard that, I do remember. They had running water in the house but only cold water from a pump at the kitchen sink. They had electricity for lighting, and a radio. I do remember them having a refrigerator that was electric. It was about that time when modern refrigerators were starting to appear in homes across the country. Those were the only modern conveniences in their house. My grandma had a sowing machine that sat to the side just as you went into the kitchen, but it worked by pumping the foot pedal, not by electricity.

This picture was taken of my grandma Bunch in 1966. She was 84 at the time, after she broke her hip she was never able to walk without her one crutch. She died in the late 1960’s.

I can remember going there at Christmas two years in a row. At that first Christmas dinner my grandpa Bunch said grace at the table, and made a comment of how nice it was to have everyone together. He said how next year one of us would be missing. He was hit by a car and killed just after the first of the year. He was crossing the road, on his way to the store only a few blocks from home when it happened. The following year everyone there returned, to the same table for Christmas dinner. Everyone was there except him; it was almost as if he knew.

He told my grandma that if he went first he would come back to check on her, and she swore he did one night. She went to bed but before falling asleep the covers floated up off her and levitated above the bed for a minute or so, before coming slowly back down on her. This is something I can’t explain. She told us she was not afraid but knew he was watching over her. I got a chill thinking about it but never doubted her story.

From what my mother told me, the Lowe farm were she grew up was for the most part self sustaining in that they grew, or raised most everything they needed, and raised a cash crop to procure the things that they were unable to produce. They kept chickens for eggs and food.

I know they raised pigs, as my mother had a scar on her ankle she received for taking a shortcut through the pigpen, while playing as a young girl. Some pigs can be aggressive, and do bite. After that incident, she gave them a wide berth, and wisely so. They raised cows, because my mother talked of making their own butter when she was growing up, but it was never enough for the table with the size of family they had.

She said that as well as butter at the table, they also used bacon grease on their toast. It provided a good flavor, and meant no one had to eat dry toast. People back then had no idea, that it might not be good for their health.

I am not sure if they raised beef cattle, for food, without having any refrigeration available to them, I know there are other ways to preserve meat, but I am unaware of what means they may have employed. I do know they had a smoke house. They smoked their own hams, and bacon on the farm; I am sure they ate a lot of pork.

They planted a large garden every spring that provided plenty of fresh produce when it came in season. As the saying goes though, you eat what you can and what you can’t eat you can. I know my grandma did a lot of canning, as mom told of how she had to help with that chore. The homemade canned goods then helped to feed the family over the winter.

Their bathroom facilities on both the Lowe, and Lee farms, were the outhouses a hundred feet behind the house. As for toilet paper, it was the old Sears catalog, but my mother told me it was sometimes dried corn cobs that had the corn kernels removed. How lucky we are today. As far as I know both of my parents grew up having electricity on their farms.

I don’t remember ever hearing anything about reading by candlelight.

Other than possibly a radio and lighting though; I don’t believe they had anything electrical in their houses like many of the things we have today.

They grew cotton as their cash crop, as it was the predominant one for the region. My mother reminisced with pride of being able to pick 200 pounds of cotton in a day. She did this while dragging a large sack behind her that held up to 100 pounds when full, and bending over to reach the cotton bowels. As a child she may have been much shorter, than when she relayed the story to me. I assume that is why everyone wanted to be, picking in high cotton, as the song goes. With less stooping and bending it was much easier on the back. As I recall, the whole story of harvesting cotton, was not a fond memory for her.

My mother was born in 1923, in Hornersville, Missouri on a farm.

She was one of twelve children, having nine brothers and two sisters. Her eldest sister my, aunt Dolly was a half sister, from a former marriage of my grandpa Lowe’s. His first wife died young, leaving him with a daughter to raise by himself. Life was hard back then, and people did not live as long. Medical care was not as good, there were fewer doctors, with a lot less knowledge available to them, and fewer hospitals in the rural areas.

Her other sister my aunt Iva, was old enough to have offspring of her own, by the time my mother came along, making my mother, an aunt from the first day of her life. She had two nieces close to the same age as her, and they grow up together. I know they were very close, as they lived, only a short distance from each other, and were able to play, and go to school together.

My mother on the left with her signature hand on hip pose. The other girl in the picture is one of her nieces a daughter of my aunt Iva’s. This picture was taken in 1939 when my mother was sixteen years old.

My aunt Dolly moved to California sometime around the start of World War II. There her and her husband owned and operated a small grocery convenience store at the edge of town. I can remember being there and seeing the store in 1952. It was sometime after that her husband died but she continued to run the store by herself for many years.

I was there onetime after I joined the Navy; finding she had a new location for her business. She eventually sold the store to retire buying a house in town.

My aunt Iva stayed near the place where she grew up, never living any farther away than in the neighboring state of Arkansas, She died at the age of 102. I had the chance to see her, on many occasions as I was growing up, and also in my adult life. I don’t know how old she was, when she became widowed, but every time I saw her, she always told me the same line, she was looking for a good man. Did I know of any, and if so could I fix her up? At first I thought she really meant it, but as time went on I came to the realization that she was just jesting with me.

I believe that my uncle William was my mother’s oldest brother. He was one of the family, who stayed in the Southeastern Missouri area, for his entire life. He had his own farm, that he owned, and raised his family on. Over the years I know he did some commercial fishing as well, with traps on the Arkansas River, On one occasion, when I was visiting him, he showed me one of his traps. It was not an elaborate affair, homemade from chicken wire, it was about 5 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 2 feet high.

When placed in the river it would sink to the bottom. It had a rope tied to it, making it easy to find and pull up onto the bank. It had a door that could be swung open on the top, to remove the days catch, and one end had a gradually narrowing funnel like opening, that would allow the fish to enter, but once in they would not be able to find their way back out.

The State required a metal license tag affixed to each trap that identified the owner. Of course there was an annual fee for each license tag, on traps a person put out. My uncle told me that he would check his traps, two or three times a week, emptying his catch, which he would then take to town and sell. He said he got 50 to 100 pounds of catfish each time. He did this in the 1940’s and 50’s when the fishing was good, but by the 1960’s he did not get enough fish to make it worth the effort.

My uncle William with two catfish taken out of the Arkansas River. The two fish totaled 85 pounds. I believe the other person in the photo was his son, who would be a cousin of mine I don’t ever remember meeting.

Of my mother’s other brothers, I know Robert was the youngest. The rest of them fit somewhere in between, him and my uncle William, in age.

I am unable, however, to list them chronologically in the order of their birth.

They were however, my uncles, Marvin, Everett, Ray, Cecil, Vernon, Franklin, and J.C. I never saw J.C. written out, and as my mother told me once that was his name, just the initials. But most of the family just shortened even that to simply J. This is one of the little anomalies of living in the South, it is possible to have just an initial for a name. Another thing the South is known for is using, both the first and middle names together all the time in referring to someone. Many people go by their two names all the time, and when you hear it, you just know they are from Dixie.

My grandpa Lowe passed away when my mother was just 10 years old, and she told me that the night he died, his old hound dog sat on the front porch and howled all nightlong. In some ways animals must be smarter than us, I don’t how, but I guess they just know, when something is about to happen.

When grandpa passed on most of my uncles were older than my mother, and all of them knew how to run a farm. It was still early in the Great Depression and the farm at least offered some security. The times were hard but at least there was food on the farmer’s tables; that was better than the long soup lines of the day. The factories of the North were not exactly begging for workers; there were no jobs to be found.

To the best of my knowledge the Lowe boys continued to run the farm, until around the start of World War II. It was the war that ended the Great Depression, and put everyone to work. If you were not in the military, you would have been working building ships, planes, bombs, or ammunition.

There was still farming to feed our country, our military overseas, and our allies. Everyone left at home was encouraged to grow what was called a victory garden to help out feeding themselves and their neighbors.

Many women also went to work in the factories on the war effort. With so many of the men off to war, and so many jobs to fill, both genders of our society became equal parts of the Greatest Generation. It was our factory production output, as much as our military that won the war.

I know my uncle Franklin was in the Army, but do not know in which theater of operation he served Atlantic, or Pacific. I know also that he was wounded in the fighting; spending sometime in a military hospital recovering. I have heard the story of how on his return home; he walked up to the front door of my grandma’s house. It was at that point he went ballistic upon seeing the Red Cross sticker, in the living room window. It seems that during his stay in the hospital, the Red Cross was very helpful to him, providing everything he needed to write home, pencils, paper, envelopes, and stamps. When it was time for his release from the facility however, he was presented with a bill, listing every single item they had given him, down to the three cent stamps. He could not see his mother supporting an origination that would do something like that to our wounded vets.

Another interesting story about my uncle Frank, told to me by my uncle Vernon onetime, was of an incident occurring soon after the war.

He was going with the women, who would later become my aunt Lucille.

They were at a party when he became a little too much under the influence of strong beverages, and a little too disorderly. The local sheriff was called to settle him down, but I am sure it must have been somewhat of an embarrassment to the sheriff when my uncle took his gun away from him.

I guess it all worked out in the end though, as when he married my aunt Lucille, the sheriff became his father-in-law. It seems that she was the sheriff’s daughter.

My uncle Frank may have raised a little hell in his younger days, but in the early 1950’s he became the first in the family to graduate from college receiving his degree in theology and becoming a Baptist preacher. He had a church until the day he died, all the while running a successful electrical contracting business, he had started shortly after the war. His church and business both were located in Southeastern Missouri, so after the war he never strayed far from where he was born. I always called him Uncle Frank, but I know some of his brothers just called him the Preacher. I always felt they meant that in a good way, and not to be at all disrespectful.

My uncle Vernon served in the Navy, I believe in the Pacific theater of Operation. I do not know what ships he may have served onboard, or what job he might have had. My uncle Robert was also in the Navy as a Seabee in the South Pacific theater. I know this because I still have a picture in my possession, of him taken on the island of Saipan in 1946. I always thought when the war ended, our guys came home in a matter of days, but know now that was not the case. It was months before many of them returned to the States, staying overseas, to provide stability to the region, until things returned to normal.

The rest of my mother’s brothers, I don’t know that much about, some of them may have also been in the service during the war, But I do not know the details.

The man I knew as my dad also came from a large family, and my agnate relatives included one half brother, two half sisters, four brothers, and three sisters. That makes eleven of them in all. My grandpa Lee was also widowed young. Between my grandparents, on both my mom’s and dad’s sides, they had 23 children, to feed, clothe, and raise. Somehow they managed to do this, while living through the Great Depression, in a time before welfare or, food stamps were ever thought of. That is what made America great, the people who preceded us.

My dad was born in North Dakota, but when he was little they moved to Minnesota and the farm where he grew up. From what I was told, it was much like the farm my mother grew up on, in that they were as much as could be, self sufficient. They raised all of the animals for food, chickens for food and eggs, and had the big garden every year. They did the canning, and preserved everything they could. My dad did tell me how they had refrigeration, but it was not quite like what we have today. They had what they called a root cellar. It was dug into the side of a small hill and had a door that sealed tight to keep the cool air in, and the heat out in the summer.

When you get down six to eight feet below the grounds surface the temperature will stay in the 40 to 50 degree range, even if the weather is in the high 90’s. To make it better though when winter comes to Minnesota; the ice on the lakes freezes to a thickness of three feet. They would take the team of horses out onto the ice with them, then sawing large of blocks of ice out with a big saw, used the team to haul the cubic yard blocks back to the root cellar. They then placed the ice on a bed of straw with more straw on top. It is hard to believe but, my dad told me that even with the hot summer, the ice would last until the next winter. They had a walk in cooler.

My dad told me of a time when he and his brothers helped their dad load the big wagon full of potatoes, which I assume was one of their cash crops they had harvested. They hooked the team of horses to the wagon, and went to town with hopes of selling or trading the fruits of their labor. When they got to town however, they found nobody to buy their crop, it being the one thing everyone had plenty of in that part of the country. There may have been people elsewhere, who were hungry and could have used them, but they couldn’t give them away. They returned home with their wagon still full, and having a root cellar already overflowing for their own use, feed them to the stock. I guess that was just another little anomaly of the Great Depression.

I remember meeting my dad’s half brother Roy only onetime, on a trip we took up north when I was about 16 years old. We also stopped by to visit both of dad’s half sisters, on the same trip as well. My uncle Roy had a large, and what appeared to me, as a very successful farm, in Eastern North Dakota. One of dad’s half sisters, whom I would also consider to be my aunt, lived in North Dakota, near my uncle Roy, on another farm. I do not remember her name though. The other half sister, again my aunt, also lived on a farm, but in Minnesota, near the old Lee farm that my dad had grown up on. I don’t remember her name either, and this would be the only time I would see any of them.

When my dad was about 14, he and his brother Jim, a couple of years his senior, traveled alone from their farm in Minnesota to North Dakota. They spent a few weeks, working for a farmer there getting in his wheat harvest. They spent their earnings from that temporary fall job, to buy their dad a team of horses, replacing the ageing pair of mules, Jake and Jenny he had been using to work the farm. There are not many of the younger generation, who would do something like that today.

My dad and my uncle Jim later left the farm to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps Camp as part of President Roosevelt’s new deal to put America back to work. They said they planted a lot of trees to replace the ones that had been cut down for lumber.

This is my dad just before he went into the Navy. I think he may have been in the C.C.C.’s at the time; other than as a child this is one of only a few photos I remember seeing of him when he didn’t have white hair.

My dad’s oldest brother, my uncle Jim, became a policeman, serving on the Oakland California Police Force. He started in the early to mid 1940s and retired in the early 1970s. I am not sure if he was in the service before the police force or not, as a picture I have looks like it could be an Army instead of a police uniform.

My dad came in next in age, being the second son in Grandpa Lee’s second family. My uncle Don was the next one to come along. I am not sure where he was, or what he may have been doing, as a young man, but I do know that sometime in the late 1950’s, he went to Alaska to seek his fortune. He was then in the early 1960’s, murdered, just as he was on the verge of making it big in the timber industry. I don’t know what the motive was behind this. When I was younger I thought murder was something you see in the movies or hear about on the news.

I didn’t think it was anything that might happen to anyone in my family or to anyone I would know. It is however, more common than you might think. I have an uncle, a brother-in-law, and two cousins who have left this life in that manor.

My uncle Lawrence my dad’s next younger brother killed a bear on The Lee farm when he was 14 years old. I still have the picture taken of him with his trophy in 1939, so he could not have been more than 17, or 18 when he joined the Navy. The war was already in progress when he entered the service but he did see a lot of action in the Pacific, onboard the USS Leutze DD 481. The Leutze was put into commission in March of 1944, and, it was about that time when the Japanese began to use Kamikaze planes on our fleet.

My uncle Lawrence with his trophy. My grandpa Lee is also in the picture.

The word Kamikaze translates from, Japanese to English, as divine wind, but what it really meant for the young pilot from Japan, was a suicide mission. They were crashing their planes, into our ships, in hopes of sinking the ships, and killing as many of our sailors as possible in the process. Much like the suicide bombers of today flying a hijacked plane into the twin towers. I don’t understand that kind of thinking. I love life too much.

The Leutze arrived in the Philippines in time for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, followed by the Battle of the Lingayen Gulf. She went from there to the battle for Iwo Jima. In all of this fighting, she had managed to dodge hits from the Japanese Kamikaze planes, while ships all around her were sunk, or damaged by them. By then they were calling her the Lucky Lady, or Lucky Leutze, but her luck was soon to run out.

The next battle was for the island of Okinawa considered by the Japanese to be their home turf and they would defend it, at any cost. It was there, on the 6th of April 1945, the Leutze was hit by a Kamikaze carrying a 500 pound bomb, killing seven and wounding forty some. The damage nearly removed her fantail, and may have sunk her, had it not been for the quick action of her crew, in fighting the fires, and flooding. When hit she had been alongside of her sister ship, the USS Newcomb DD 586, assisting her crew in fighting fires, and dealing with the wounded. The Newcomb had already been struck by four enemy planes, when the fifth plane got both ships. Later that night both the Leutze, and Newcomb were towed by minesweepers to Kerama Retto island where repairs could be done by a repair ship. The work took three months to make the Leutze seaworthy enough to cross the Pacific on her own. During that time, they were still under frequent attacks by enemy air strikes. The Leutze was sold for scrap in June of 1947. This would seem to me as, less than a fitting end, for a ship with her battle record, and just over three years old at the time.

My youngest uncle on my dad’s side was my uncle Lynn. I met him only twice. The first time in 1952 when we went to California, by way of the old route 66, for a Lee family reunion at my grandma