“I hope I didn’t bore you too much with my life story.” - Elvis Presley.

Adventureland Band Contest is what I was doing the day I discovered that he had died. It was Grandpa, Grandpa Joe, that died on my mother’s birthday on April 27, 2013. I received the call from my dad saying that he passed away in his sleep around 4:00 in the morning. At least he was able to say goodbye to the three of us the last time we saw him.

He was telling us about his time in the military and throughout the rest of his life, (which my grandmother helped him with for most part). That was the best day I had with him, for a while, just because of all the laughs we had.

We brought Grandma Betty and Grandpa Joe a delicious dinner that night. I had a sandwich of some kind, from which my grandmother took out the tomatoes and other things I didn’t like. Grandpa talked about his time in WWll. He told us the story of when he dived off of the LST (a.k.a Landing Ship Tank) that was roughly two stories high (stories are about ten to eleven feet.) The LST door is huge that comes down in the front of the boat. It could hold quite a few tanks. Grandma said, “Any fish in the water?” Grandpa chuckled and said “Sharks!”

He was not as talkative as Grandma, though. My dad brought me downstairs and showed me the barber chair. Surprisingly, it really did look like the ones when my grandma was a child, maybe a bit after her. Grandpa frequently cut my dad’s hair in that chair. The chair was white and black. The black was on the sitting side of the chair. I told my dad that is one thing I want, along with the ropes, when he’s ready to pass it on. (For the ways of tying knots in the army or something like that.)

This is probably one of my favorite stories he told us. To make extra money, Grandpa washed clothes for the people on the ship. He was busy washing the clothes, and he was on deck about to throw the water overboard. He threw a bucket of soapy, dirty water and it literally landed right on his command officer because his command officer said something and Grandpa turned around. For Joe’s punishment, he had to peel shrimp. When he came back, he couldn’t stand shrimp, and when Grandma started to talk about the shrimp, he said, “Don’t even mention it.”

Grandpa signed up for the reserves when he was working at the railroad. In the army, he was a signalman. A signalman is someone who communicates to the other ships. His ship also fueled other ships that needed fuel. This was during WWll.

He was told he was going to be stationed in Washington on the USS Rochester. There was a diarrhea epidemic, so they changed his assignment to the USS Iowa that would go through Long Beach, California or San Francisco.

The railroad kept his job for him, for when he would be able to do the assignments and come home for a stable job. He stayed in the reserves and they snatched him right back up. Once a month, he would go do drills and assignments. They snagged him back for the Korean War in 1950. When they grabbed him for Korea, he went over with a Marine ship as a Navy man and went to Korea and shelled the shore, so the soldiers who were freezing cold could go under the shell to get on the ship. They were so frozen that their flesh was coming off and their bones were showing. Troops transported our ships where the back comes down and let the troops in or out. You see them a lot when they talk about D-Day. He had been called in as a signalman: the only signal he sent, though, was “ Send us some coke.” That was a very “important” job.

We recorded all of it down during the time we were there, so at least I will be able to hear his voice again. I love hearing people’s stories because we all have a different story to tell.

Maybe I’ll tell you more about his time in Korea. That’s a completely different story for some other time. When I was listening to the recording tears filled my eyes, I had so many flashbacks of the last time I saw him...