Should You Learn To Swim?

"In 1941, I was in the armed services. The Navy. I never learned to swim, but I was told that most of the time I would be on a ship and wouldn't get much fighting time. Then they said that when there was fighting, the ship would be doing the fighting."

"Somehow, I didn't once think that if the ship was hit, that could mean I would end up in the water. Well, the ship was hit!"

"Then only in the middle of the battle, did the thoughts flash through my head, why oh why didn't I take swimming lessons when they were offered? Our boat didn't sink. We sprung a leak. It was a big leak, but I didn't once hit the sea, or the water."

The USS Yorktown was heavily damaged during the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 8, 1942. The ship was later repaired and converted for jet use in 1955 with the addition of a new angled flight deck, hurricane bow and flight deck. It then served as an anti-submarine carrier in Vietnam. In 1968 the Essex class carrier was used to recover the crew of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the moon.

Then he would show us the photos and talk about his Captain as we drove to swimming lessons.

The twins, my big brother and sister want to join the service also. My brother, the Captain of his swimming team has plans to join the army. Why wouldn't he want to follow in our dad's footsteps? He would say, he wants to do what Grandpa did in World War I.

He would get some hand-to-hand combat. He never did take any martial arts training or participate in wrestling or boxing, or body building, only swimming. Then my sister wants to enlist in the Navy. She can doggy paddle and float pretty good she says.

"When I was on leave, I met your mother. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Only problem is she was German. Her family was in the camp after all, right?"

"Let me tell you that your mother has done the most for this country. I won't go into it as you already know most of it. Some will never be known. It can't be told. But let me tell you that your mother is a hero."

We would pull into our parking space at the lake just then. Dad still doesn't know how to swim. He will walk out into the water on occasion, and he watches our lessons, but he hasn't taken lessons.

After swimming lessons on this day in July 1964, we couldn't find dad. Then my brother spotted something that looked like dad's glasses floating on the water. He swam toward them and dove into the water and came up with dad.

Dad was an ugly blue color. He had seaweed all over him. The lifeguard worked on dad, and the ambulance came and took him.