Elvis & Waikiki

It was in a letter to my mother, dated April 10, 1962 that I told her I was spending an extended liberty weekend at Waikik with my buddy Lory Miller from the Battalion Aid Station at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Air Station. We rented an apartment just off Waikiki beach for the weekend and spent our first day walking the 10 miles or so to Pearl Harbor to "check out the ships". We spent Saturday on the beach at Waikiki where the co-eds were going crazy with the filming of "Girls, Girls, Girls" starring Elvis Presley. We were streached out on the beach with our surf boards that we checked out from special services for the weekend, had our sun faded tropical print cotton swim suits on, and were greased-up with coconut oil from head to toe, but the co-eds were more interested in Elvis that weekend than a couple of guys trying to fake being civilians. Sometimes we even wore tattered and sleevless University of Hawaii sweat shirts to put a spin on being college students, but that generally didn't work either. We were probably just to obvious, too much white skin in the wrong places.
There were many other stories in those letters: like the Johnson Island Atomic Blast of July 8, 1962, the lone ship at Pearl Harbor during the Cuban Missle Crisis, the purchase of my 54 Ford convertible from a fellow Corpsman who was being discharged, the entrapment inside an LVT that wouldn't start some 500 yards from shore, and the Marine who was making a rocket out of an M1 cartridge that exploded penetrating shrapnel into his femeral arterythat I field dressed and air evacuated to Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu.
The memoir is coming along rather nicely, the research that is. I have bits and pieces of the big story, but I feel like I am just beginning. As I read the letters home, so much starts to come back to me, the memories that the letters seem to bring forth. I find myself filling in the details that the letters didn't expand upon, and kind of relive the moment. I start thinking about the petty officer 2nd class with 16 years in the Navy who was escorted into the laboratory at the Navy Dispensary at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Air Station that was suffering from prolonged syphilis , and I had to draw blood on him. There just seems to be so many stories, stories that I want to relive, stories that I want to tell. I feel somewhat impatient, trying to get to the end of a memoir that is miles away.

Researching Letters to Mom

Most of the research for this Memoir Paper comes from letters I wrote home to my mother when I was in the service from 1961-65. She saved every letter I wrote and it is those letters that make possible the reconstruction of my experience and adventures in the Navy/Marine Corps. I am now reading each letter and coding the rear envelope with notes on the content of the letters and placing them in chronological order.
I have been reading some very interesting letters that I sent home, at least interesting to me. One of the recent letters I read details the first meeting with Darvin and Lori Haupert who lived in Honolulu where Darvin was an employee of the Bishop Estate, one of the primary land barrons on the island of Oahu. Darvin was also a 1st Lieutenant in the Navy reserve stationed at Pear Harbor, serving out his time in his dress whites. My connection with Darvin was through his father who was a shoe merchant in Huntington where my father called upon him as a salesman with Portage Shoe Company out of Milwaukee,Wisconsin. Mr Haupert had my father forward Darvin's phone number and address in Honolulu, and suggested I call. Well, I did, and that was the beginning of a long and wonderful experience of enjoying the hospitality and companionship of Darvin and his wife Lori over a three year period of time in Hawaii. They were recently married and opened their entire home to me, even providing me with my own room when I came to stay with them on liberty weekends, and I frequently did just that. Darvin had a sweet 57 T-Bird convertible that was his pride and joy, and he let me drive it on weekends when I went to Waikiki for fun in the sun. You couldn't ask for nicer people, who took me in like I was their son. took me along to meet their friends for social weekends, and never let a holiday go by without an invitation to spend that special time with them. They were just wonderful people!
I did a search this week for Darvin and Lori and tracked them from Honolulu to Texas and then to North Manchester where they reside today. I think they are at Peabody Retirement Community, their age and lack of property ownership in Wabash County tells me that. I look forward to making contact with them and get their side of the story of the young man they befriended so many years ago. I want to do something special for them, as a gesture of my gratitude and thanks, and just let them know that forty years doesn't erase a memory and strong feelings.