Varifrank: A day in the life of...

A day in the life of...

One cold February day in 1942, a group of Navy men who had been working at a shipbuilder in New Jersey stopped for a moment and had a photograph taken. On this day, a ship they had worked hard to bring into the Navy was finally completed.

It was a simple picture, one snap, a flash, and off they went about the business of their day, one moment of commemoration and camaraderie mixed into the deadly serious business of preparing for war. Chairs folded, hands shook, congratulations all around and it was over. It was a simple human moment in time captured in chemicals, stored on a small piece of film stock, coated in a light sensitive emulsion and rolled up tightly in a camera. For its time, this technology was considered the highest of “high tech”. Today, it conspired to perform a miracle.

Later on in the day, the photographer would have stood alone in a little darkroom under a red light, dressed in his rubber smock wearing protective rubber gloves as he began to work with his film and the transforming chemical agents to conjure out the darkness a photograph that would reveal for the viewer the simple moment captured by the lens on that long ago day and time; just a group of servicemen gathered together in a room in a Shipyard in wartime New Jersey, sharing the simple pride and patriotism of their work with no more historical significance than that to anyone but them.

It was a cold time in history for Americans and a cold time for the world. The entire world was at war, no one was safe and it was far from settled on how it would all turn out. The picture was of a moment taken on a day when the future was very much at question. To the men in this picture, the future is still yet to be seen, while to us; its history.

On the day that picture was taken 90 days after the start of the war, other men were still working to repair the shattered fleet in Pearl Harbor where for Americans, the war started. Other men were fighting the losing battles of the Philippines and those who would survive through all of it would have their fate sealed in the Bataan Death march. The early planning for what would eventually become the “Doolittle Raid on Tokyo” was still being worked out stateside in Florida and the pivotal battles of Guadalcanal and Midway that would occur later that year had not yet happened. To us, its history and its outcome is as certain as the rise of the Sun tomorrow morning, but to all of the men in this picture, nothing is certain and their fate is in the hands of the men and women who work in the factories, the shipyards, the docks of what little remained at that time of the free world. The war at this point is not going well for our side and we have a long way to go before it is a settled issue. Before the war is over 52 million people world-wide would lose their life in the war that by this point has already been underway since 1939.

I have never seen this picture before today, and yet this picture has a direct and deeply personal connection to me. There it was; a simple black and white group photograph taken by someone I don’t know; here it was staring back at me on a web page made of html, hosted on servers sitting in another State and transmitted over phone lines across the country and finally displayed on a plasma screen in my office. “High tech” has moved along in the years since the photograph was itself “ high tech”.

There - seated on the bottom row, on the far right side sits a person who to me is the most deeply influential person I have ever known. He is, to me the very definition of ‘hero’, but he is also something else, something much more personal.

The man seated on the far right side in the bottom row is Chief C. N. Martin.

He is my grandfather.

While I was aware through family legend and tales that he told me that he was there that day in 1942 to see the USS Fletcher get underway, there were no photographs in our family to commemorate the event.

That is, until now.

He was my fathers father, he was my grandfather and my sons great-grandfather and every time I look in the mirror, I have always seen a little bit of him reflected back at me. But today, a missing photograph taken long ago shows up on the Internet and a man I once knew and will always love is now staring back at me.

He sits in a room in New Jersey, while a young ensign sits next to him who cant be as old as the number of years my grandfather had at that time already served in the Navy. I know exactly what my grandfather is thinking without being told, it’s as if I can read his mind from across the years.

Dont worry sir, just stick by me and everything is going to be just fine. And sir, please dont touch anything. I dont want you going and getting hurt on my watch, it wouldnt look good on my record if a new Navy ensign was to go home without all of his fingers.

My grandfather stood "black watch". He did not suffer fools lightly of any rank. He loved The Fletcher Destroyers and he loved the Navy. He served in the Navy until 1961.

And just so you know, in this picture he is smiling...

The world to be and the war itself are out in front of him and the other men of the crew of the USS Fletcher. History is out in front of them. At the time this picture is taken, his family is living safely in Gardena California. The great 30 million person megopolis of Los Angeles of which Gardena is now just a small part of, is yet to be. At the time this photograph is taken, my father is 4 years old, my is uncle 12 years old and my aunts, 11 and 10 years old. They are all young children underfoot of my grandmother Agnes. Today out of all of his children, only one of my aunts survives while over 40 of his grand and great-grand children now live carry out his legacy. Over the years, I’ve watched as each of us, his children and grandchildren lives their lives, ages, grows old and sometimes dies, but in this picture that future and all that it brings with it is still way out there. As a matter of fact, I am still out there somewhere, still yet to be.

Only the fragmentary memories held by myself and by my cousins remain to serve as the memorial to him and his generation. We only have our memories and a few scattered photographs on which to commemorate a lifetime of effort, a lifetime of little miracles and stolen moments and little victories. And now it seems there is one more photograph to add. One photograph, that until today we knew nothing about.

The universe conspires to remind you of how really precious are the little miracles that happen every day in our life. They are what make us who and what we are and one should never fail to be humbled by them when they happen to us.

Today, I am deeply humbled.

( my deep thanks to the folks at www.destroyersonline.com for preserving this small fragment in the history of my life and my family. )

Posted @ January 17, 2006 09:35 PM | History file

thanks for sharing this. i foind it very moving and enlightening.

the memorial to yopur grqnfather is a world freer and rcher than the world as it was, and the world as it might have been if he and his brothers at arms had failed.

my mother's father was in the Navy durting WW1.
his brother served in the navy, too.

when my grandfather passed away, the family gathered to go through his personal effects with grandma, his widow.

in his wallet, we found a 1918 newspaper clipping of the little news item about the ship his brother served on - about how it was attacked, and how it sank, taking all with it., including his older brother.

he carried that clipping everyday of his life.

love.

pride.

patriotism.

there are still many MANY people who can feel that way about serving in our armed forces - THANK GOD.

but it's obvious that today -- and ever since the Left took hold of the campuses and the media, and the "cultural revolution" of the late 60's early 1970's -- there are fewer who do, and there are more who deride the military and deride using force to liberate people from tyranny.

i think it really all began in the 1930's: the left (USSR symps and idealistic dupes) took over the campuses and then infiltrated the MSM and the State Department and then in WW2 they infiltrated the OSS and them its successor the CIA.

we are still laboring under their disproportionate influence.

which is why it important to remeber we have a war to win here as well in iraq and afghanistan and elsewhere.

as george baily said (paraphrasing), "the only heels in the world aren't over there, Mr. Potter."

thanks again for sharing this, and for fighting the good fight here at home.

Posted by: reliapundit at January 18, 2006 07:42 AM

I used to live in the Navy Yard in Charlestown - part of Boston - and commute from there, by boat, to my office across the harbor.

One morning I stood, waiting for my ferry, with an older man. We watched, silently, as several vessels of the German fleet maneuvered into place and tied up at a nearby pier, flags flying briskly in the breeze, rails lined with eager sailors waiting to sample the pleasures of shore leave in our city.

I turned and asked my fellow observer, just on a hunch, whether he had worked in the Navy Yard when it was a vital part of our war effort in World War II, and he said that he had.

I asked him whether, in his wildest dreams, he ever would have imagined doing what we were doing at that moment, watching the German Navy tie up in our Navy Yard.

"No", he said softly.

"No."

Posted by: Everyman at January 18, 2006 09:12 AM

Thanks for the story. I find it fascinating that your grandfather worked on a vessel that transformed naval warfare. The best part, though, was "And just so you know, in this picture he is smiling..."

Thank you for sharing your cherished memories.

Posted by: Chris at January 18, 2006 02:00 PM

I have no doubt that he was God in the goat locker.

Posted by: Captain Ned at January 18, 2006 07:48 PM

Thanks for the memories and the history lessons. I've linked.

Posted by: Kathryn Judson at January 20, 2006 01:10 PM