In continuation of the Dreaded Boxes Project …
Dean and Paul
An earlier entry introduced you to my mother and her younger brothers, Dean and Paul, at early ages, roughly 5, 3 and 1, respectively. Somewhere around the mid 1920s.
Today’s exploration of the Dreaded Boxes reveals a series of photos of Dean and Paul, mostly taken in World War II years. Both of the brothers joined the Navy in about 1942 (remember that Pearl Harbor triggered the war in December 1941, an event I only dimly remember as a 7-month-old infant from my crib).
As I grew through childhood, I had little enthusiasm for most family gatherings. But after Dean and Paul returned from the War, their presence was something very special to enjoy. Each uncle had a memorable sense of humor, Dean’s tending to the dry and understated, while Paul was more sardonic, as I recall. Both seemed to have a strong sense of the absurd. My brother and I revelled in the tales they would tell and the pranks that they engineered. One of Dean’s favorite stories was about someone who, driving on a road trip, would announce that he was tired of driving and, without slowing, removed the steering wheel and passed it to a passenger, asking him to drive instead. I recall that Dean even re-enacted the event while seated with us kids in his old Plymouth (but not while in motion). Almost everything that Dean and Paul did or said seemed hilarious to us.
(I should add that Dean’s sense of humor and playfulness never left him, as when I saw him during a visit to his Omaha home in the 80s, he showed me a faux golf ball of the type that he would use to surreptitiously place on a rival player’s tee — only then would it disintegrate into grains of a sand-like substance when struck by a golf club.)
Dean
Dean was stationed in Hawaii during the War, where he worked as a Naval mail clerk (foreshadowing his later career with the US Postal Service). Here are some photos from that time period.
And this set of photos seems to be upon his return to the States, with some perhaps taken by my mother.
Paul
Paul was trained as a Radioman, and after serving during World War II in Guadalcanal, re-enlisted for a career in Navy radio operations. Included in the Dreaded Boxes were a couple of pieces of V-Mail from Paul to my mother, in which he mentioned little direct action but some occasional bombing and listening to friendly anti-aircraft fire at night.
Some pictures from Paul’s camp in the Guadalcanal jungle. We think these date from about 1943. Unfortunately, nothing is annotated and we lack descriptions and commentary on what must have been a fascinating, unique experience.
