- One Sunny Morning

February 17, 1976:

Mom awoke early that morning, got dressed, and crept softly downstairs to grandma’s kitchen to make coffee and prepare for breakfast.  She wanted to have plenty of time to get us all ready to go home. 

We had all traveled to California from Lincoln a week prior, and now our vacation had come to an end and had been a success.  My cousin Mike, a recording engineer who mixed huge rock and roll bands of the time, had married a beautiful Hollywood wardrobe mistress named Jennifer three days earlier (on Valentines Day, of course), and they had sped off to their honeymoon in Tahiti among a flourish of laughter and good will. 

            Mom was happy how everything had come to pass.  The wedding festivities were over, and she had gotten to see all of the family on dad’s side and spend a few days with her mom and her sister, too.  Now she was ready to head home, and get back to normal life. 

We were planning to leave for the airport in Fullerton fairly early, once everybody got their things together.  One of the benefits of having your own plane was you could come and go as you pleased not tied down by an airline itinerary.  That lack of stress alone made it worth it. 

One by one that morning we all awoke and made our way downstairs for breakfast.  Mom already had gathered my 3 year old sister and she sat in a highchair and sucked on her bottle.  Then came my brothers Chris, who was 10 years old, and Rick who was 8, then me (I was 7). 

We gathered with our mom at the breakfast table near the big glass door that overlooked grandma’s lush garden out back.  Bright morning sunshine filled the room.  My brothers and I did our regular breakfast routine as mom chatted with grandma and sipped coffee, alternating between that and us kids to sort our cereal, milk, and orange juice issues.  Four kids had made her a pro by that time, and she carried it all off without missing a beat, as always. 

After awhile, dad came down and joined us too.  He had been up since before mom and had gone for a run, and had showered and changed before coming down.  He greeted grandma with the usual pleasantries and she reciprocated. 

Grandma never really got along with my dad too well.  She loved him, insomuch as he was the husband of her daughter and the father of her grandchildren, but she never really seemed overly fond of him.  He would tell me the story years later, about how he began to see mom, a beautiful nursing student at Rio Hondo Hospital, where he worked as a lab tech while he attended medical school at UC Irvine.  Grandma hadn’t approved of him…my dad was a little too rough around the edges for her. 

Dad was born in Los Angeles in 1934 to a true American working class family.  His father, Kenneth (I always called him Pappy), worked various jobs before jumping up after the attack on Pearl Harbor with the rest of America.  He immediately enlisted in the Navy and went on to serve as a Chief Petty Officer aboard the USS Pennsylvania.  Much like it had been for me, the service was what he needed to get his stuff together. 

He had boarded his vessel at Treasure Island in San Francisco after it had been refitted at the only useable dry dock at Pearl, having been only relatively damaged in the attack.  The USS Arizona, the Pennsylvania’s sister ship, had sunk and was still smoking in the harbor while they feverishly worked on the Pennsy.  The Pennsy was one of only three battleships left in the Pacific Fleet still floating in Pearl after the attack.  She would spend the next four years leading the way as America exacted her revenge for the treachery of Imperial Japan.

Pappy served under a young and funny officer from Nebraska named Johnny Carson in the communication section deep in the belly of the huge ship.  Yes, that Johnny Carson.  Carson was stationed in the radio room with pappy during battle stations, which was probably often enough.  Years later, while we all watched Johnny on T.V, Pappy would tell the story about playing an occasional game of chess with him as they waded through the down time inherent in all combat, particularly naval combat. 

By the time it was over, the Pennsy had fired more ammunition than any other ship in the war, and perhaps in all of history. She took two torpedoes to her stern one day near Okinawa, but still stayed afloat.  Pappy told the story about how they had to stuff the holes in her with seat cushions and mattresses to keep the water out.  The image always cracked me up as Pappy spun the story, painting the image this huge battle ship cruising along with mattresses sticking out of her.

But Pappy always tempered the humor with a far off look as he told me of the men and friends they lost that day…the ones who died outright when the torpedoes hit, and the ones who drowned shortly after when they were trapped in the rapidly flooding compartments after their comrades were forced to seal that section of the ship off by closing watertight doors.  They had to do that to save the ship.  He said they could hear the clanking of wrenches on the bulkheads for what seemed like a long time as the doomed sailors pleaded for their lives before eventually all was silent.  I don’t think he ever forgot that sound, and it probably haunted his dreams, too. 

After the war, once she had outlived her usefulness, they nuked the Pennsy (not once, but twice) at the Bikini Atoll during the atomic tests in 1946.  Nonetheless, she still would not sink. Two years later, they towed her to an area near some small island in the South Pacific, opened her sea cocks, and sent her down quietly and peacefully to her final resting place somewhere deep under the blue waves, her mission finally complete.

During the war, my dads mom, Hazel, worked as the proverbial ‘Rosie the Riveter’ at the Douglass aircraft factory in El Segundo.  She helped build the Dauntless and Devastator dive bombers for the Navy and Marines until the war was over.  She, my dad, my uncle Jerry, and aunt Mary were a typical war family of the time, supporting the war and their sailor until he would return. 

My grandfather was a rough man.  A hard drinker and tough talker, and could back it all up.  He smoked 3 packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes or Camels every day for thirty years (although he quit before I was born).  He was his own man and was smart, but was also a firm believer in personal salvation through physical labor.  He believed that the greatest thing you could do in life was build and create things. 

He and Grandma moved in to take care of us after mom died before Debbie moved in, and thank god for them.  He taught me my multiplication tables, and about rocks and gems, which he liked to cut (he called himself a ‘Rock Hound’).  He showed me how to make pancakes and how to garden.  He was everything I thought a real man should be.  I stood in awe of him. 

He survived a stroke years later that hit him on a fishing trip near Guadalupe Island, 250 miles from San Diego along the Baja coast.  My dad and his medical partner Bruce were there, however, and somehow got him stable and kept him alive until they got back to San Diego twelve hours later.  A Learjet met them there and flew them all back to Lincoln for his care.  I am sure to this day that sort of episode would have killed most people, but not him. 

Despite his invincibility to me, he finally died of stomach cancer.  It was ten years after ovarian cancer took Grandma Hazel.  I was training with the Marines at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert when Terri told me.  I attended his funeral in my uniform and got to salute his remains as a Marine.  I knew he was proud of me, and that made a difference.  My dad sent his flag to the U.S.S. Pennsylvania Reunion Association in Washington. 

Long before that, after his graduation from high school, dad followed his father’s footsteps and also joined the Navy as a Corpsman.  He had enlisted with the intent of fighting with the Marines in Korea, where Corpsman were a favorite target of the Red Chinese.  When he entered Corps school, the instructor told them as much, but gave them an out.  He said anyone who didn’t want to take the chance, to say so now, and move to the other side of the room.  They would receive a different assignment.  After a few seconds, nobody had moved.  Satisfied, the instructor commenced with the training.

Fortunately for my dad, and for me as well, the Korean war ended in July of that same year, just before my dad finished Corps school.  He therefore stayed on the right side of the ocean.  He avoided combat, but saw in detail its horrible results.  He served out his tour at the Veterans Hospital in Bremerton, Washington as a corpsman, helping the bloodied Korean vets try to get put back together.  It was long hours of frustrating bureaucracy and thanklessness, but the experience taught him the value of education and also provided him with the means to seek it through the GI Bill.  It also gave him a new interest:  Medicine.

After the service, dad went to college at Humboldt State University in California’s far north, then came back to Los Angeles to attend medical school.  He was married at the time to a woman I have never met named Sandy, but that didn’t work out.  Afterwards, he managed to get his lab tech job at Rio Hondo, and met my mom.  He thought she was amazingly beautiful, he told me later, and caught his attention immediately.  She was nice to him too, at a critical time when he really needed someone to be nice. 

He had brains but seemed to lack serious refinement, grandma had thought when she first met him.  And he came across as a bit of a playboy, with his crew cut, cocky attitude, and sharp wit.  He certainly didn’t fit the mold of an academic type.  He had divorced Sandy only shortly before he had met mom, and grandma didn’t approve of that sort of business at all. 

She had hoped mom would go for one of the nice boys from their church.  She had been sort of seeing one boy there...a clean cut Christian boy.  But now for some reason she was drawn to this man, who grandma was sure hadn’t seen the inside of a church in more than just a while.  She was right.

            Of course my moms father, Ray Carter, thought dad seemed alright, and his approval for dad to see his little girl was what was truly important.  He thought that at least dad would be able to get a job as a doctor and not be a bum.

            Grandma and grandpa Carter were from the old school, too.  They had traveled to Southern California during the dust bowl from South Dakota.  The small dairy farm they had there fell victim to the shifting sand, and they made their way west with the rest of Midwest farmers.  They settled in a small Dutch community called Cerritos, and thrived once again.   

Mom was born in Los Angeles in 1944 and was ten years my dad’s junior.  She was barely a woman when she and my dad met in the fall of 1963.  She enjoyed the fun things that the youth of the era did back then, like rock and roll and fast cars.  Her teenage record collection included Paul Anka, Frankie Vallie, and a new kid named Elvis - and she loved to dance.  She was on the drill team at her High School, and was in a car club that liked to gather at the local car hop and cruise the streets of the 1950’s L.A. suburbs.  She liked in my dad exactly that which Grandma was worried about. 

            It was impressive that when she got pregnant out of wedlock with my oldest brother Chris that dad had somehow found the courage to tell Grandpa Ray.  When he heard, Ray slapped his forehead in disbelief, looked back and forth at both of them for a second or two hoping for a punch line.  When none came he closed his eyes.

            “Not the doc..!” he said. 

Ray was a big man; around 5’9” foot and stocky in build.  A heavy smoker too, he built skyscrapers in Los Angeles with his firm, and had come up through a pretty hard road.  I heard both of my grandfathers got along great, being cut from the same cloth; a breed that all but disappeared sometime between the early seventies and late eighties.  They were men who always wore hats and ties, changed their own oil and tires, and insisted on opening doors for ladies.  Like Pappy, Grandpa Ray was also at Pearl Harbor during the war.  He went there as a civilian welder, and worked there for almost two years to help clear the debris and rebuild the base.

It took guts for dad to be honest, but that was dad.  Grandpa Ray had grown to like and respect him, and dad for his part promised to make an honest woman out of mom, and quickly - and did.  The shotgun was not necessary at the wedding, but I’d be willing to bet it wasn’t too far away.

I wish I had gotten to know Grandpa Ray, but he died of a heart attack while on vacation in Orlando with grandma when I was still a baby, only a few years before that morning in the kitchen.  I share his name, though (my middle name), and take great pride in that.  I take comfort in knowing that at some point in my life he held me and looked at me and was proud of the little baby I was.  I can still almost remember how it felt sometimes.

            In all that time, grandma never saw in my dad what Grandpa Ray had seen.  She was cordial, but never got too close.  She knew all about my dad, as my mom always talked to her on the phone, and I am sure told her all about all his things, or mistakes he may have made.  And like us all he made one or two.  I guess she just thought my mom could’ve chosen more carefully.  People are always slow to come around. 

But in the end she did.  Dad was often by her side as she lay dying of kidney failure years later.  She had forgiven him in the end. 

My dad was dedicated to his family and his work from the start.  He didn’t want the hard life his dad had lived, and knew that medicine was his out.  Beside he was damn good at it, and loved it.  He loved his family, too and would do well by them.

In spite of dad and grandmas relationship, she loved my two brothers, my sister, and me.  She was always quick to spoil us when we came out to visit her in California.  We always had a good time on those trips.  This trip had been fun too, and now grandma smiled at me sitting next to mom as I ate my cereal and we made the final preparations for our trip.

We could have never known what the coming hours had in store for us.