Join the Navy and see the world, even Narragansett Bay

When my dad married my stepmother in 1958 I gained four step-sibllings: Bobby Gerald (21), Clarence Edward (20), Patsy Louise (17), and Billy Russell (15). I was 17 too, three months older than my new stepsister (but do not wonder, we were not each other's type) and I went overnight from being an only child to being the middle one of five offspring in our newly blended family. Since there was already a Bob in the family, my new stepmother began calling me Bob Jr.; the name stuck and I am still called that to this day.

In 1960 I played the piano for the wedding of Bobby Gerald and his bride Linda, and they recently celebrated their 65th anniversary. The other siblings have all passed on now, as has my stepmother who died in 2004. Mrs. RWP (the lovely Ellie) and I have not been back to Texas since her death but we stay in touch with Bobby and Linda about once a month by telephone.

Recently Linda called to say that while going through some papers in an attempt to do some decluttering she found an old letter I might like to see because it mentioned my Dad around the end of World War II. I asked her to send it to me and it has arrived.

At the upper left of the faded envelope, the return address read:

NAVY DEPARTMENT
_______________
USS PCE 869
c o Fleet Post Office
New York, N. Y.
__________________
OFFICIAL BUSINESS

and the envelope was addressed to:

Mr. Roy Wisner
Corning Glass Works
Central Falls, Rhode Island

There was no zip code because zip codes had not been invented yet.

I didn't recognize the name, neatly typed using an old-fashioned typewriter. I wondered what sort of letter this might turn out to be.

Inside, typed on U.S.S. PCE 869 letterhead, was the following:


24 August 1945

Dear Roy:

This will introduce to you, Clifford Brague, who has just been honorably discharged from the Navy under the point system. For personal reasons, he wants to make his home in Pawtucket or Providence now that he is out of the service, and I have referred him to you with the thought that you could use him in your shop organization.

Aboard ship his work has been in the operation, maintenance and repair of diesel engines and ship's auxilliaries. He has been one of our leading men for some time and his work has been exemplary in every respect. He is completely reliable and his personal integrity is unquestionable. If you have any opening in the organization in which he might fit, I would appreciate your giving him every consideration. You would not regret it, I am sure.

Before coming into the Navy in December, 1942, Mr. Brague worked for the Century Ordnance Plant, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His work there was strictly along the machine shop line, in the set up of production jobs for machine operators. In the event that you do not have an opening in the type of work for which he is qualified, you are probably in a position to give him some very good leads on some other good stable organizations in the area. I know you will give him any help possible.

Sincerely yours,

Don Shoemaker

(end of letter)


I know that before the war Dad worked at Dearborn Brass Works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Perhaps this had become the Century Ordnance Plant mentioned in the letter. Such things were common during the war. For example, the IBM building in Poughkeepsie, New York, where I worked in the 1960s had produced rifles during the war instead of accounting machines. And I know that after our family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in August 1947 my dad found work at Consolidated Vultee Aircraft (known as Convair, which later became General Dynamics) and held that job until his death in 1967. I never thought about it before, but I have no idea where Dad worked in Rhode Island after leaving the Navy. My mother went to work daily at the Coats & Clark Thread Factory and my Dad went somewhere to work as well, but I have no idea whether Mr. Wisner hired him at Corning Glass Works or he found work elsewhere. A strange gap in my knowledge. I never realized it before.

I do find it very satisfying to learn that my dad received such a glowing recommendation from Don Shoemaker but I am in the dark as to just who Shoemaker was, whether the ship's captain or someone in another position. Whatever else my dad may have been (I have talked about our relationship elsewhere on the blog), he was definitely a hard worker, a man of integrity, and honest as the day is long.

At the end of the war, the USS PCE-869 was sold to the Republic of China (that is, Taiwan) and continued to be of use until it was decommissioned and ultimately scrapped in 1971.

Dad's floating home spent time in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, escorting other ships part of the way to the European and Pacific theaters of operation. It traveled through the Panama Canal, and sailed as far north as Greenland. I think he had shore leaves in Portland, Oregon; San Diego, California; south Florida; Norfolk, Virginia; and New York City. His ship was sometimes employed as a "sub chaser" ("sub" being short for submarine). Years afterward, Dad relived in his nightmares the dropping of depth charges and seeing dead bodies floating up to the surface. During Dad's final days in the Navy, his ship was at Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

Below is a photo of the vessel where my Dad and about 80 other men lived and worked from 1943 through 1945:

Uncle Sam wanted him, and he went, enlisting at the age of 36. He was older than the captain of his ship. Most of the guys were half his age and called him "Pop". He talked about the Navy every single day of his life after he left it.

My 869th post

The number 869 has special meaning to me. During World War II, my dad was a machinist's mate on the U.S. Navy vessel PCE-869. The letters PCE stand for Patrol Craft Escort, which type of ship escorted patrol craft (duh!) and hobnobbed with sub (for submarine) chasers. In later years my dad had nightmares in which human body parts floated to the surface of the sea after he and his shipmates set off depth charges. (From Wikipedia:
“A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon intended to destroy or cripple a target submarine by the shock of exploding near it. Most use explosives and a fuse set to go off at a preselected depth in the ocean. Depth charges can be dropped by either surface ships, patrol aircraft, or from helicopters. The depth charge has now largely been replaced by anti-submarine homing torpedoes.”)

Dad joined the Navy in 1942 and was on the PCE-869 from 1943 to 1945. His last months before receiving an honorable discharge were spent at Quonset Point Naval Station in Rhode Island. He was 36 years old when he enlisted, older even than the captain of his ship. Everybody on board called him “Pop” because most of them were young whippersnappers not yet dry behind the ears, too big for their britches, all of 18 or 20 years old. He didn’t mind; in fact, he rather liked it.

When I found the photo of Dad’s ship, the site also had a place for a list of the crew. There was only one name listed, Father Frank Toste. I googled his name only to learn that he died in July of this year at the age of 86. (World War II did end 66 years ago, after all, and my Dad would be 105 if he were still alive.)

Father Frank Toste, from what I gather, was a fascinating fellow. He was born March 20, 1925, in Providence, Rhode Island, and died July 6, 2011, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He entered the priesthood in 1960, was teacher of Drama and Drama Department Head at Notre Dame High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut (1960 - 1965); Assistant Headmaster and Department Head of the Theatre Department at Saint Peter's High School in Gloucester, Massachusetts (1965 - 1970); and Founder and Department Head of the Drama/Communication Arts Department Teacher in all areas of Theatre within the Department including Film and Television at Peabody Veterans Memorial High School in Peabody, Massachusetts (1970 - 1990). He then retired to Cocoa, Florida, but returned to the north in 2010. He had done graduate work in Theatre at Ohio University (1983) and graduate work in Filmmaking at UCLA (1983), received a Master of Arts in Drama from Harvard (1991), and was a doctoral candidate in Filmmaking at the Union Institute in Cincinnati (2000). To me, the most interesting paragraph in his obituary was:

“Always an avid stage and screen participant, Father Toste received certificates in Cinema from the School of Cinema/Television at the University of Southern California and the Feagin School of Drama and Radio in New York City. He was most proud of his affiliation with the film, ”Love Story,” in which he had a speaking role and met the co-stars of the film, Ryan O’Neil and Ali MacGraw. Fr. Toste was also an Equity Actor and a technical advisor for the long-standing television series M.A.S.H. and appeared in “Oliver’s Story,” and was on stage at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly. He was a long-term member of the Screen Actors Guild.”

I read in another place that he was Technical Advisor on M.A.S.H. for the character of Lt./Capt. Father Francis J. Mulcahy as played by William Christopher.

Ever the ’net surfer, I then discovered that some of Father Toste’s former drama students from Peabody had posted comments on Facebook about their favorite teacher. One of the threads asked people to relate, if they remembered, some of the funny things he was always saying. Lots of people responded. What blew me away (UK readers: American for “astonished me”) was that one of the quips they remembered was something I heard my Dad say many times:

“I see,” said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.

I know. Groan. Lame joke. But it must have been considered hilarious back in the day, and I could just picture my Dad and his shipmates interacting daily in the confined passageways of the PCE-869. I don’t know who said it first, my Dad or the young man who became Father Frank Toste or somebody else, but for a moment, I was a kid again and my Dad was close.

Some of us who are living and breathing can still remember the service of our fellow countrymen so many years ago and we are grateful. Father Frank Toste, the only one of Dad’s shipmates whose name I know, I honor you and the entire crew of the PCE-869 today.

[Editor’s note. A few hours after finishing this post, I suddenly realized that I know the name of one other sailor from the PCE-869 as well: Leroy Behrens of Round Rock, Texas, in whose living room I sat in September 1958 with my Dad and new stepmother on a trip from Coppell, Texas, that deposited me in the dormitory at Southwestern University at Georgetown, Texas. It had been 13 years since Dad and Leroy had seen each other, and they talked much about their days in the Navy. They never saw each other again. --RWP]

The Owl and The Pussycat

Anatomy of a post, or How My Mind Works.

In the previous post, I included a photograph taken in 1945 of Coney Island, New York, in which you cannot see the beach for all the New Yorkers. In a comment, Reamus from California said, “I am not in that particular picture, but I am in a similar one no doubt at that very beach a number of 4th of July weekends later. Used to take the subway there all summer back when the world and we were young.”

I replied, “Why would you take the subway all summer long to a beach you couldn’t even see? Or maybe the beach wasn’t what you went to see.” The phrase went to see reminded me of the phrase went to sea which struck me as somewhat ironic since those folks at Coney Island couldn’t see the sea they went to sea to see and that further reminded me of Edward Lear’s poem, “The Owl and the Pussycat”:


The Owl and the Pussycat
by Edward Lear

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are.”

Pussy said to the Owl “You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?”
Said the Piggy, “I will.”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.


I poked around a little more on the internet and discovered that on May 12, 2000, the following paragraph appeared in the Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of painter and poet Edward Lear, born in Halloway, England (1812). He was the 20th of 21 children, and was raised by an aunt. He had to scramble to make a living: he traveled to Europe, Asia, and Africa to collect views that he would then turn into paintings to sell to Englishmen at home or abroad. Sometimes he set out a hundred paintings at a time and work on them simultaneously to have enough products to sell. He was a lonely man -- an epileptic who hid his seizures, a homosexual unable to find a mate, and a depressive, subject to what he called “the morbids.” But it’s not for his art or his sadness that he’s remembered, it’s for the little nonsense poems he wrote to give joy to the children of his friends and patrons. He always felt most comfortable around children, and he entertained them with poems such as “The Jumblies” and “The Owl and the Pussycat.” He popularized the limerick too.

That’s him up there in the picture.

And then it occurred to me that May 12 was also my Dad’s birthday -- May 12, 1906 -- and although he was neither an owl nor a pussycat, he went to sea too, though not in a beautiful pea-green boat. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a machinist’s mate on the USS PCE-869, which was a patrol craft escort of the type known as Sub Chaser.

Then it occurred to me that my father died of pancreatic cancer on March 3, 1967, and that the anniversary of his death is just a few days away.

It’s enough to give a person “the morbids.”

And that, more or less, dear reader, is How My Mind Works.