World War II started.  I was eleven so I can remember Pearl Harbor and all the news coming at that time. All of our information came over radios and the movie news that if you went to the movies which wasn't that often. 

Speaking of movies, I can remember during the summer, since we didn’t have air conditioning, some of us kids would  stand by the doors of the theater and when people came out we'd get this blast of cold air. That was sort of neat. There were just a lot of childhood things during that time. I was active in the YMCA going to programs which included learning how to swim. There were the Boy Scouts as well.  Following my graduation from eighth grade I attended  Wayland Academy, which was up in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin and somehow related to the Baptist Church. While there I had my first experience with school politics as it were. I was chosen as the freshman class president. Iit was my first experience with sitting down with committees and planning events, doing organizational  work at a pretty basic level.  I went out for football and got knocked around and decided that’s not for me. I started playing basketball which was more realistic for a tall skinny kid. During this time, my stepfather had gone down to the Canal Zone, and obtained work  there with the Panama Rail Company as a meat cutter.  So in February of ’45, my mother and I flew down to the Canal Zone by way of New Orleans, Merida Mexico, to Guatemala and then down to the Canal Zone. In those days the windows in Pan Am were all blacked out, and when we did finally arrive in the Canal Zone there were barrage balloons up all over. Those were interesting times. 

I was coming actually from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin having left in the middle of winter to a tropical climate. It was hot and humid, and until I got used to it the sweat just poured off of me. I was pretty active in sports. I ran a little bit of track, and I got a job at the swimming pool, at the clubhouse in Balboa. And got my lifesaving certificate and worked as a lifeguard. We played water polo, and there were some swim meets.

But it during the war years my biggest memory is that of troops coming and going to the South Pacific . And I suppose the most memorable—or one of the most memorable things—was seeing the carrier USS Franklin coming through. Often times when you watch South Sea war movies or documentaries, you’ll see she had been hit by a number of kamikazes and leaving her barely  afloat. They got her going however, making it to the CanaL Zone. There were dead men in the hold when they came to Pier 18 in Balboa, and seeing that ship with big steel plates wrinkled like tissue paper was pretty impressive. There was just a lot of stuff related to the war going on in those days. Very busy place. Service people from all branches of service everywhere.

After the war a couple times we transited the canal on some small carriers. For all I know I could have transited the canal on Monterey, on which later in life was the ship  I made qualification  landings   when I was going through flight training. The Monterey was a jeep carrier.

 I was in the Canal Zone when we returned to the US arriving on a soon to be decommissioned troop ship in Boston This would have been the summer of ’46.  I had finished my freshman and sophomore years at Balboa High School in Balboa During that time I had continued in scouting. I think I got my life scout there. 

We drove from Boston  to Chicago to visit some of Art’s family, and then on to California, where my grandparents had moved to a little place called Sierra Madre in the foothill outside of Pasadena.  Art went to work for Safeway—he called it “Slaveway”—as a meat cutter. There I went to high school at Pasadena Junior College. It was the last two years of high school and first two years of college. During my senior year they called it Pasadena City College, but with the same configuration. While living in Sierra Madre I continued active in scouting but now through the Explorer scout program. 

In November of ’46 I got my Eagle award. That was a big deal. I was the first Eagle Scout in our community since before the war. I also went out for the track team and lettered for two years. I was captain of the cross country team in my senior year. Just normal teenage stuff.
Perhaps one of the more memorable moments was in Explorer Scouts going up to Yosemite. Backpacking up in Little Yosemite Valley, in days when most people didn’t do that.  We were joined by Explorer Scouts from all of Region 12: Hawaii, California, and Arizona. We walked away with all the honors. It was a great group of leaderts and kids. One of my friends from those days lives here in Auburn, and we get together every now and then.
When I arrived here in May of ’46 I went up to Scout camp at Mount Baldy and  was asked to stay on as staff... that was neat. When that camp closed, we went over to Catalina Island to Camp Cherry Valley, which  had been closed during the war years. We went back there to have one camp to end the summer. We had a lot of work. We had to break the concrete which had sealed the cave where they stored a lot of equipment. One day we were out  swimming in the bay, just getting clean and taking a breather, and swan up to this yacht that was anchored nearby. This older guy  leans over  just making small talk. We told him we were on the camp staff and eventually the conversation ended. We swam back and did some more work. That night Skipper Robinson, who was the Scout leader and district executive, and the staff were sitting there around thes camp fire and all at once this same gentlman comes up, walking up from the beach. He says, “Listen, I brought my fiddle with me. Do you mind if I played?” It turned out to be Yashua Heifitz. It was just really great sitting around a fire overlooking the ocean while listening to one the world's greatest violinist .

Well, in ’48 I graduated from high school. We go back to the Canal Zone. Art had gone on ahead of us. He had received a job down there as the supervisor of, cold storage goods that were going through the Canal Zone. Providing the ships, with the perishables they required.  There I attended for one year Canal Zone Junior College in Balboa. Stuck up some old friendships I’d had from my high school days. Went back to work at the pool and did a lot of swimming, and life-guarding. Went out for track and in the process set the Canal Zone record for the half mile...not all that wonderful given the conditions down there. 

I suppose the most memorable moment  was a water polo game. This was ’48 and the Olympics were about to begin. I think in London. The Argentine water polo team came through by way of the canal and wanted to play a game with some locals. Well, we didn’t really play much water polo. But we were pretty good swimmers; and the long and short of it is, we beat them. We beat them, largely because Ronnie Angermuler,  was our goalie…nothing got by him! So they went off to London I think probably a bit deflated.
But let’s see… the big deal was if I got a B average I could go to school up in the States. So I got a B average, and in August of ’49 I got on a ship and went up to San Pedro, where I was met by a couple of my friends from  high school years. We spent about two weeks just driving all over California, ending up at Lake Tahoe and then going back down to Santa Barbara, where they left me off because that’s where I was enrolled. In those days it was called Santa Barbara State Teachers College, and it was in downtown Santa Barbara.  I went out for the track team and participated there. My studies went down the drain.