Here it is: I love family history. And wait! Don’t leave yet! While most people would call family history the dullest hobby out there, just know that nothing beats a great story.
Think about it: we all enjoy boating adventures and invest tremendous effort to get on the water. But a day only lasts, well, a day. But if we’ve lived it well, then we’re left with a good memory (which is actually just a good story).
Outside of brainstorming boating columns, my current mammoth project is writing a book about my grandparents’ lives. I won’t bore you with the details of the months I spent scanning slides and digitizing type-written journal pages, but I will share some gems I found along the way.
My grandfather, Ronald Fisher, served in the Navy during World War II. On the cusp of young adulthood, his heart sank at the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Though he had never planned on serving in the military, he rushed to enlist before he could be drafted. Always a fan of water adventures, he chose the Navy.
After boot camp training, he was sent to gunnery school and swiftly assigned to a destroyer, the U.S.S. Benham. Along with his 300 shipmates, he sailed through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific Theater of War.
Ronald’s journal account describes his fighting as a gun captain on his ship, being attacked by dive bombers, and victory at the battle of Iwo Jima. One of the craziest stories, though, is when he survived a typhoon in the middle of the open ocean. Along with a task force of battleships and aircraft carriers, Ronald’s ship was helpless against the forces of the sea.
He wrote, “The storm hit in all its fury. None of us, including our captain, had ever been in a storm this big and powerful. After several hours, our engineers filled the empty fuel tanks with salt water to keep the ship from capsizing.
“I was below deck on my bunk, holding on as the ship was tossed about in the storm. All of a sudden, the lights went out and we were in total darkness. Water had entered some of the electrical switches and controls. The ship came to a stop. We rolled 67 degrees and a huge wave must have pushed us upright or we would surely have capsized. Although 45 degrees is halfway over, we had rolled 67 degrees.”
During all of these moments Ronald feared for his life, as almost everyone would. Of his time in the war, he wrote, “I felt I was going to be killed, that sooner or later an enemy bomb or bullet would have my name on it. I thought I might as well do my best as long as I could. I thought of my parents and my brothers and sister, and I felt I would not see them again. I would never have a chance to marry and have a family. These are the thoughts that went through my mind, and I suspect similar thoughts went through the minds of my shipmates.”
But here’s the thing. Ronald was one of the lucky ones to survive. He served in the U.S. Navy for three years with great courage. At the war’s end, he was honorably discharged and returned home to his loved ones. He married, had seven children, 22 grandchildren (including me!), and lived to the grand old age of 78.
It’s interesting to me that even after sailing 190,000 miles across the ocean, he still loved to climb aboard a boat. When my dad was young, Ronald owned a little fishing boat and often took his kids on summer fishing adventures. He moved on from his Navy service by living the quiet life he’d always dreamed of: raising a family, growing a garden, and enjoying the occasional boating weekend.
Talk about a roller coaster of a story. I wasn’t bored, were you? My guess is that you have adventure stories like this in your family, too. And if you’re lucky they’ll even involve boats.
