New york times growing up skipper
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‘Never,’ said a priest, ‘have so many candles burned in this church.’ Patrick’s in the heart of the Italian district on the lower east side, bowed, shabby figures came and went and, by the day after the President died, hundreds of candles burned in front of the altar. Yank Magazine, read by soldiers and sailors throughout the world, reported: “Nowhere was grief so open as in the poorest neighborhoods of New York. For my grandfather FDR had almost reached victory but God just didn’t allow him to see it. God let him go up on a mountain and view the land and then he died. She said that her father had observed that Moses wasn’t allowed to see the Promised Land either, even after leading the Israelites for 40 years through the desert. I knew, from conversations I had with many in the crew, that they were as upset as I was.
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In a sense I was mutinously conducting my own silent service for FDR. Soon many members of the crew gathered there to read what I wrote. Then I took my one-page essay and posted it with Scotch tape on the stack in the stern.
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I even harkened back to what I had read in high school, in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” the funeral oration by Mark Antony for Caesar. I wrote about how this man was one of the greatest leaders in American history, how he had rescued us after the great Depression and how he had led us to the brink of victory in World War II.
NEW YORK TIMES GROWING UP SKIPPER MANUAL
So I went into the communications shack, grabbed a typewriter - they were manual in those days - and typed out what I considered an “editorial.” (Today we’d call it a blog!) It was titled simply: “FDR.” And I was carried away. I didn’t like the fact that our skipper was going to let this day pass without doing something about it. We had suffered damage during the Battle for Leyte Gulf in the Philippines and the subsequent Battle of Lingayen Gulf. But, somehow, the politics seeped out - even though Franklin Roosevelt was our commander in chief, he had millions of detractors in addition to millions who loved him dearly. The three forbidden topics in Navy wardrooms were: politics, religion and women. The youngsters in the crew - myself included - couldn’t remember anyone else being in the White House. To some of us on the other side FDR was like a god. If they referred to him at all, it might be as “that man in the White House.” And some of the Republicans harbored deep feelings against Roosevelt, the man who had been elected to four consecutive terms, two more than any man in American history. We were divided: three Republicans against, I guess, two Democrats. I knew that because it came out during the three meals the five of us officers had every day in the tiny wardroom. I should explain that the skipper was a staunch Republican. “Do you think we should have a memorial service?” He glowered at me: “I’m not a minister and I don’t think I want to have a memorial service.”
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I rushed to the captain’s cabin with the news. I was the junior officer, in charge of communications. We had a crew of 60 enlisted men and five officers.
NEW YORK TIMES GROWING UP SKIPPER PC
I was on a small ship, the USS PC 470, anchored off a small island thousands of miles away in the South Pacific. Groups, small at first and ever-growing, assembled in silence wherever a shopkeeper had turned his radio speaker toward the street.” The Times wrote the next day: “In home communities - Brooklyn, the Bronx, Harlem, Queens - women left their dinners on the stoves to stand in neighborhood groups, passing the word, or discussing it with bated breath. The news spread in crowded subway and railroad platforms, through Times Square, in bars and restaurants. The news of Roosevelt’s death was announced in theaters, schools and on the radio. Here in New York people went to churches and prayed. The day Franklin Roosevelt died America stood still.