December 7, 2017
Volume 46 - No. 48
By Friedrich Gomez
I hated school with a passion when I was growing up – I mean really hated it like a bottomless bowl of beet soup, or root canal without the anesthesia. I would rather gargle with a throat full of piranha than sit in class. But then, one day, abruptly changed.
things
I remember as if it were only yesterday. I was 10-years-old, in 4th grade class, wishing I were somewhere else. I was watching the wall clock, just waiting for school to end.
Then, that one fateful day, we learned about Pearl Harbor. That moment in history that, somehow, changed my life. There would be other battles in our elementary school history books, but this one . . . was strangely different for me. For reasons secretly known only to me at the time, the reign of terror at Pearl Harbor hit me in the gut as a small child and that pain of remembrance continues to this very day. Small children can be most difficult to figure out, especially from an adult perspective. Different things can affect us in vastly different ways for, seemingly, no sound reason. For me, the reason was simple.
As a small child, I was raised with the U. S. Navy all about me. Our neighbors who lived on both sides of us, as well as directly across the street, were all either active or retired U. S. Navy officers.
To our port side lived Chief Petty Officer, Ray Kilmade, to whom I became deeply attached and learned much about U. S naval history. Master Chief Petty Officer, James Lair, to our starboard, taught me to recite all the ranks of the U. S. Navy from Seaman Recruit to Fleet Admiral, in precise transmission order. I even memorized the various types of warships, past to present.
There was no getting away from the U. S. Navy – not that I ever wanted to. Even my uncles were in the navy. I first fell in love with the uniform when I was about 7-years-old and would sit The The Paper Paper -- 760.747.7119 760.747.7119
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my tiny body down on the carpet at my aunt’s house, just staring at the framed photos of my Uncle Charlie in his bell-bottomed dress blues. Or the fullcolor photos of my Uncle Sotero (my favorite uncle of all), so freakin’ handsome in his ‘summer whites,’ complete with “Dixie Cup” navy hat, twinkling green eyes to match some parts of the Seven Seas, and dashing smile showing off his pearly whites! Uncle Soto, as we called him, served as an Electrician’s Mate on board the USS Saratoga, a Forrestal-class supercarrier built for the United
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States Navy in the 1950s, well after the Pearl Harbor attack. But there were past relatives even before them.
These all were the real navy men of a bygone era. The era of Pearl Harbor, the day that FDR called: “A date that will live in infamy.”
The memories of learning about Pearl Harbor during my childhood years in elementary school, and the raw pathos that went along with it, burned deeply into my psyche. Those images still
remain vividly alive in my mind from those formative years to the present day. Through tragedy, sacrifice, and death, Pearl Harbor was a constant reminder of how valiant, how courageous, how truly heroic our men in uniform could be. And how they died for us. The ultimate sacrifice.
The stories still haunt me as I strongly identified with my own family’s commitment and loyalty and service for our country. I cried softly as a 10-year-old,
I Wept at Pearl Harbor Continued on Page 2