Ken, Don, Ron and Babe

1943, I think. Ken was home on leave, and I suppose my parents wanted a family picture just in case. Our country was in the midst of World War 11, Ken was in the military, and there were two more sons who probably would have to serve in the Armed Forces. My dad would have been 46, my mother 43, (not much older than Paula is now). Ken , 22, Don 17, Ron, 16, and Babe, 14. A friend of our family had a son who was in service and sold one of his suits to my mother for $10.00. That’s the suit I’m wearing. It turned out to be my graduation suit as well. As it turned out, Don and I both had to join the military. Don was in the Navy for a short time, but he was medically discharged when it was discovered that he had a heart condition. The Navy must have considered it serious to discharge him in the midst of a war. My parents did try to get him to seek medical advice, but he felt good and didn’t regard his situation as dangerous. I didn’t want to wait for the draft and face the possibility of being a foot soldier. The Navy sounded more attractive so after high school graduation, I went to Ashland to get information from a Navy recruiter. I found out that I had to enlist right then. The recruiter covered a wide area throughout Northern Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. He would not be back in Ashland until after I was 18, and that would be too late for me to enlist into what they called a minority cruise. A candidate for this plan had to be 17 years old and was guaranteed discharge before his 21 St birthday. My mother had to take the bus to Ashland to sign for me since I was underage. I went to Ashland to get information and came home a sailor.

I had some lofty idea about pursuing a medical profession eventually so I enlisted in the medical corps. I did my boot training at Camp Perry in Virginia, my corps school training in San Diego, and was sent to the Great Lakes Naval Hospital. After several months working on wards, I was assigned to death desk duty because I knew how to type. Handing serious and critical lists and making transportation and burial arrangements for deceased sailors was bad enough, but fingerprinting the corpses became very depressing. I gladly accepted the transfer to the School for Medical Practitioners on Guam. I spent a year on this war torn tropical island working with students from all over the South Pacific. True to its word, the Navy discharged me just before I turned 21, and I returned to Wisconsin. After a year at Northland College in Ashland, I transferred to Superior State, earning a BS degree with majors in history and English.
The rest is current history.