No word yet...and some memories

I have been asked several times in the past 24 hours, "Have you heard from her yet?" No, I haven't. They were told cell phones probably would not work where they were going...2 1/2 hours north east of Managua...and that the only communication might be an internet cafe. So I dutifully check email. When I do hear, I will let you know.

Rose has gone into her "Mamma's gone frump." She gets like this when Aleene is not around. I suppose I don't help matters because the level of activity slows down considerably when she is gone. I run for groceries only if I have to and when home I am writing or watching TV or sleeping. Yesterday I ventured out to Target to get dog food and some other Target items. No stops; just in the van, up the road, and back. The car wash lines were huge, so I put off getting gas too. Came back home and ate a salad and watched navy videos. I have a video of the FDR that was shot the first year I was aboard. Frank McGee from NBC News...remember him?...narrated a one hour piece that is all flight deck...in fact, that is its title. I have only had this tape about two years and I think this is the third time I watched it. Too many memories. I cry when I see familiar faces of the pilots and officers I knew on the flight deck. They haven't aged a bit and I have...not fair.

The heart of the story is that during the 24 hours this was shot in late April 1964 on our way to the Med we lost a pilot. They capture that of course. We lost five aircraft and seven crew members that cruise. I always went to the memorial services if I was not on watch. We would dress up in our tropical whites and assemble on the foc'sle (forecastle). On Roosevelt it is the furthest forward you can get under the flight deck and is all trimmed out in white. The anchor chain (each link weighs 2K pounds) runs across the deck with the big windlesses all painted black. You could probably accommodate 75 people in theater seating. Our chaplains did a masterful job. Sometimes we knew the crewmember that died and sometimes not.

I cry when I watch this tape because for that service the sea was rough. and there we were standing athwart ships...while the ship was pitching up and down. Don't let anybody fool you. Aircraft carriers can be jerked around in rough seas. And during the service we stood to pray and the ship pitched and those of us without very good sea legs had to hang on to the chairs. The video captures that moment and it all comes back like it was yesterday.

The lost pilot was a 39 year old Squadron Commander, Robert Komoroff...whom I knew to see. Think today that he would be 80 if he would have lived. Then I think of the young men and women who are dieing in Iraq and elsewhere serving in the military for the same reason I did. It was the thing to do. Service to the country. Family tradition. Someone has to pay the price for our country to go forward...agree with the individual military situations or not. We are who we are...a free people who others regard as the target. Some of us make it and some don't. Those that don't should be honored and never forgotten. So today I got out my cruise books and remembered each one of crew we lost between 1963 and 1965...just like I watch Jim Leher every Friday when he silently honors with a picture and name each service person lost in Iraq...just like I made myself read every name at the Arizona memorial when we went there five years ago. Those were real live breathing people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and lost their lives serving our country. Thinking about all that makes me cry.

Sorry to be so negative today...watching navy videos does that to me...and remembering the liberation of Auchwicz this week does that to me...