Among the vessels tied up along San Diego’s Presidio as part of the Maritime Museum, is the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier launched just after the end of WWII. I feel an affinity toward the Midway because my husband served on her during a period between 1948 and 1951 after he had decided to do a twenty-year stretch in the Navy for the pension.
During his tour of duty he made two six-month cruises to the Mediterranean, and one north through the Davis Straits into Polar Regions that earned him a membership in the Blue Nose Society. I ran across his membership card a few years ago and donated it to the Midway’s collection of memorabilia.
As part of San Diego’s Maritime Museum, the Midway is open for tours by the public for a price, but I got a free tour from a friend who belongs to the organization that sponsors and maintains her. My bum leg didn’t allow me to climb up to the captain’s bridge or down to the engine room, but I got to see the bunks where my husband would have slept, the galley and eating area he would have used. Best of all I saw the place on the hangar deck where my children and I, and many other dependants of crew members, were treated to cake and ice cream one time when the Midway had just returned from a cruise.
What I remember best are the emotional reunions after the ship had been away for many months. What passionate embraces I’d get from my husband once he came down the gangway and we found each other! Of course we were just one couple hugging and kissing with our children hanging on to us among all the other wives and children waiting on Pier 7 in Norfolk, VA. What I would give now for just one more of those hugs and kisses again! But my husband passed on many years ago from a heart attack when he was only 59 years old.
The thing that really gets me worked up is the very large statue in a little park on what they call the G-Street mole, a point of land next to the Midway. In it a sailor is embracing his girl, or his wife, in a huge hug that almost envelops her. It is done in color, and it is so lifelike it grabs my heart and brings back all the love and happiness I felt every time my husband returned from a long cruise, and I was the one getting a hug just like that. My throat chokes up and the tears squeeze out even after 59 years.
This week a statue of Bob Hope has been dedicated not far from the sailor statue. It shows Bob standing with his well known profile - his ski nose and jutting chin - raised in front of a microphone as he tells jokes to a dozen assorted service men who represent the thousands of homesick men he entertained on his many USO tours to overseas military bases. The statues of the servicemen show them in the midst of clapping and laughing, and they are so lifelike you almost expect them to turn to look at you and give you a punch on the arm to make sure you are ‘getting it’. From remembering all the news films of those events, I’m not sure whether they liked Bob’s jokes best or the pretty girls he brought with him. Veterans who ever saw one of the USO Bob Hope shows still smile and remember him fondly today.
After viewing the statues and experiencing all the nostalgia I could handle, my daughter and I sat on a bench next to the bulwark that holds back the waters of San Diego Bay. We enjoyed the fresh breeze, the slightly fishy smells, and watched the silhouettes against the lights of Coronado of the tour boats coming back from sunset trips.
Long before a bridge was built to Coronado and North Island, where the aircraft carriers have always anchored, I have been told that there was a personnel ferry (no autos) called the ‘Nickel Snatcher’ that tied up at Fleet Landing. It almost seemed to me I could feel the ghostly presence of the sailors returning from liberty after carousing in the bars, girly shows, and tattoo parlors that once flourished along lower Broadway.
Now high rise buildings and fancy apartment buildings dominate the San Diego's skyline. I guess that is progress, but I bet there are old sailors alive who still enjoy thinking about the fun they had as careless youths in those far-off days between the long and dangerous trips to sea in the South Pacific during World War II.
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Comments: 9
On his last furlough before being shipped overseas, we took him to the train station and he lifted me in his arms and carried me onto one of the cars filled with rowdy soldiers to show me to his friends. I was timid and hadn't been comfortable with going until my mother told me the train couldn't leave without the conductor and she wouldn't let him get on the train until I got off. My dad was 22, and he hugged me and hugged me. Those were our last hugs, but it was good we didn't know that. The lighted car when it was still dark outside, seeing my mother and grandmother peering through the window, the men all dressed like my dad in Army uniforms, and the noise and laughter from the men are still very fresh in my mind.
A special hug to you, also a long-time widow.
A beautiful article. My father was was in the Navy aboard the U.S.S. Curtiss and spent his last months in Coronado. He was stationed at the North Island Base after serving in the Nimitz March across the Pacific. One of my earliest memories of Coronado was a time when he took me to see an aircraft carrier that had returned from Korea. Its decks were filled with war-damaged aircraft, very moving even for a child.
Cheers,
Colonel Possum