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Senior memoirs: My first ocean cruise |
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It wasn’t a Royal Caribbean, Princess, Holland American, Disney nor Norwegian cruise. Uncle Sam paid for my first ocean voyage. When, in wartime 1943, my local draft board was dragging as many 18-year-olds as they could grab into the Army, I decided sea air was much healthier than foxhole mud. I enlisted in the Navy.
Fortunately for my ego and reputation among my shipmates, I wasn't seasick as we sailed through the choppy waters of San Francisco Bay and headed out to the Pacific. However, it seemed every one of the 2,800 young Marines aboard were. As one of the lowest-ranking members of the crew, my first Navy job was to help clean up the grossly messy passenger bunking areas, chow (cafeteria) compartments and heads (toilets). |
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Top Trio in Paris for Springtime Visits |
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 Ella Fitzgerald is, except maybe for Sinatra, my favorite singer of all time. Many years ago, she recorded Cole Porter’s, “I love Paris in the springtime”. The song ends with, “I love Paris every moment, every moment of the year. I love Paris; why, oh why, do I love Paris? Because my love is here.”
Every springtime when we return to Paris, we find scores of wonderful places we’ve never seen before, but we still make sure to visit our old favorites. We start at the Eiffel tower, the symbol of Paris and France to the world, where victorious armies of both friend and foe have marched through the years since 1889. |
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Catching a big one near Ketchikan, Alaska |
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Springtime Travel: Experience Normandy's history, scenery & bubbly |
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Welcoming springtime 2009, many seniors are already booking travel schedules. What could be more meaningful than a visit to France’s colorful Normandy region? Today it offers beautiful scenery, quaint historic towns and other great tourist delights. Many yesterdays ago, for those few of us still around who can remember back 65 years to D-Day on June 6, 1944, Normandy means nostalgia tinged with sadness.
On that day, I was more than 6,000 miles away at the Navy base on Treasure Island, California, an 18-year-old crew member of a Navy troop transport. We were soon to head out to the Pacific, where we'd land GIs in the Philippines in October 1944, and Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa early in 1945.
We knew what was ahead for us, and could relate to the GIs who struggled ashore in Normandy on June 6. Aboard our ship, we listened intently to news reports as the American, British and Free French troops fought their way inland toward Paris. |
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Cactus Flowers Herald Springtime in Tucson AZ |
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