When the notice arrived, Barbara and Morris were living in an apartment in Morgan Hill, California, a little village about seventy miles southeast of San Francisco. Morris was working for the Soil Conservation Service and they had been married about nineteen months. They had been wildly happy during that time--Barbara said it was like an extended honeymoon. Morgan Hill was a country town in those days and the measured pace suited two people who had both grown up in farm towns. With the war raging in Europe and the Pacific they knew, of course, that Morris would eventually be called to active duty, but they had made the most of the time they had together.

When the orders arrived they packed their meager belongings--clothes, dishes, linens, card table, and a small lamp table--and shipped them to Barbara's parents' home in Hyde Park, Utah. Then they took the bus to San Francisco to buy Morris's uniforms. They didn't own a car.

The young couple took the train to Utah to see both sets of parents on their way to Virginia. Since Barbara was five months pregnant, Morris tried to convince her to stay with her parents in Hyde Park, but she begged to go with him. She didn't know when she would see him again. He might be shipped out on a moment's notice directly from Virginia to Europe and they wouldn't see each other again for a long time.

If ever.

With servicemen traveling to their posts all over the country, it was not easy to get a ticket for Barbara. In the end she did manage to get on the train, but Morris and Barbara had to share an upper sleeping berth. Barbara remembers it being "a little snug for two and one half people." They were on the train three days and two nights, but at least they were together.

Norfolk was (and still is) the site of America's largest naval station. In 1943 the city's seams were stretched to the ripping point with the influx and departure of Navy men. About every other day one battalion (a thousand men) would arrive and another would depart.

A hotel had been recommended to the Thurstons but it was full, so they went across the street and got a room at a more decrepit looking place. Morris was supposed to report to the base that day, but on his way out he saw some unsavory-looking people hanging around in the lobby and decided not to leave Barbara there alone. He went back to the room and they talked about what to do.

They decided to call the president of the local Mormon branch and see if he knew of a place Barbara could stay while Morris was at the base. When they sat on the bed to look in the phone book for his number, the bed collapsed. "We really were not heavy," Barbara said. "We managed to get the bed back together again and sat very gingerly on the side to telephone. That night, while we were sleeping, the bed fell in again and woke us up. We just slept with the mattress on the floor for the rest of the night. We did giggle a bit as we had heard a comedy sketch on the radio that was similar to what had happened to us. When we heard it we had thought it a little farfetched, but now we didn't."

The branch president was able to find a private home for Barbara to stay for the weekend. It was in Portsmouth, just a few miles from Norfolk, and belonged to a work acquaintance named Fred Ayer. It was a pretty two-story home on the edge of town and it reminded Barbara of southern homes she had seen in pictures. It was white, set on a slightly raised piece of land, and was surrounded by a large green lawn. There were no neighbors nearby. They Ayers had a little boy about three years old and a black live-in maid.

Barbara stayed in a small bedroom that was directly attached to a larger bedroom that the Ayers rented out. A person had to go through the bigger room to get to the smaller one. After meeting her and sizing her up, the Ayers decided that Barbara could stay on past the weekend if she was willing to rent the little room. Of course, she would need to stay in her room until after the tenants of the big room had left. Although the situation was far from ideal, Barbara took it. Since Morris would be at the base most of the week she needed someplace to stay and the large hotels and boarding houses were too expensive. She felt a bit shut in but, as she put it, "Where would I go anyway?"

Nevertheless, the hours did get long in such cramped surroundings. Barbara managed to keep herself occupied with sewing and crocheting. Her mother had made "some darling little baby dresses and slips" and sent them to Barbara all stamped ready to embroider. She included the tatting and crocheting to be sewed on. Barbara also crocheted a baby blanket. She had always liked to read but did not have any books with her.

Barbara ate breakfasts and dinners at the Ayer home and became good friends with them. They had a southern accent and Barbara loved to hear Mrs. Ayer talking on the telephone. She would sit on the top step of the stairs and frequently inject, "Ah declare" or "do tell." Their small son, Fred Jr., had such a thick accent ("just like the maid's") that Barbara could not understand him most of the time. She remembers him saying that he wanted to "run aboot da hoose" and not understanding what he meant.

Barbara had been there about three weeks when Morris learned he was to be transferred to Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, about 47 miles from Norfolk. Barbara would need a new place to stay so one day she took the bus to Williamsburg, which was a small town at that time, but had already been established as a showplace for colonial living. Of course, it was not equipped to handle a thousand Navy men coming in every other day, or their wives.

It was a blustery, cold day and Barbara "walked and walked and walked" about the town trying to find a room. It seemed that every door had a note by the doorbell saying, "Don't ring, we have no rooms" or simply, "No vacancy." Chilled through and through, Barbara tried to pull her coat tighter around her, but it was a form fitting coat that she had bought when she was teaching school and it didn't fit her pregnant shape. She searched all afternoon, but when the time came for her bus to go back, she had found nothing. She was frozen, tired and discouraged and trying to keep the tears from flowing, when she saw an officer with his wife and a small boy. They seemed happy and Barbara surmised they had found a place to stay. Barbara approached them, trying unsuccessfully to keep the quaver out of her voice as she implored them to help. Did they know of a place that might take her in?

The woman, who empathized with Barbara, was kind enough to write the addresses of two houses that might take boarders on a piece of paper. But just then Barbara's bus arrived and she had to go back to Norfolk. As soon as she arrived home, Barbara wrote a letter to one of the rooming houses. In her letter she wrote that her husband was to be transferred there on Tuesday, and asked if she could please rent one of the rooms. She added, "We don't smoke or drink if that is of any interest to you."

Mrs. Ayer was upset to think that Barbara couldn't find a place to stay and on the next Monday, when no response to the letter had arrived, she offered to drive Barbara to Williamsburg to look some more. Morris was coming in from the base that day and Barbara asked her to wait until he got there. Luckily, as Morris arrived, so did the mailman with a letter from the woman who ran the boarding house saying she had a room for Barbara. In the letter she said, "It is important to me that you don't smoke or drink." On Tuesday Barbara took the bus to Williamsburg and felt blessed to have a room waiting.

Barbara's room was on the second floor along with three others. The four boarders shared the one bathroom. The house was close to the center of town and Barbara could walk to the small café to get her meals. Morris was able to come in from the base more often after the transfer to Williamsburg. It is hard for us to fathom the look of towns that had large military bases nearby. Barbara remembered Williamsburg being "blue" with Navy men.

There was only one laundry in town but it was of limited use. Since Morris could be transferred on a moment's notice, he could not be sure he would get his laundry back. Barbara would wash his dress white shirt in the wash basin in her room and iron it on her bed. The material was all cotton and very difficult to iron nicely, not like the easy-iron materials that most shirts are made of these days. Barbara remembered that "it was quite a trick to iron with the bed going up and down every time I pressed down with the iron."

Battalions were leaving every second day, and with their departure a thousand more recruits would arrive. Women anxious to see their husbands or boyfriends, perhaps for the last time, were hunting places to stay. The doorbell at Barbara's boarding house rang all hours of the day and night.

Williamsburg was a small town with much history. John D. Rockefeller had purchased a large portion of the city and restored the old buildings to look like they had in colonial times. It was a picturesque and exciting for Barbara. Several times a day, volunteers would dress up in colonial costumes and ride in horse-drawn buggies around the town. The historical buildings and homes were open to visitors and Barbara found great enjoyment in visiting them. Some of the places she remembered visiting were the governor's palace and maze, the capitol building (scene of Patrick Henry's famous speech), the powder magazine (the storehouse for military supplies) the public goal, Raleigh Tavern. She particularly enjoyed the restored kitchen in the palace and remembered how the pewter and furniture shined. She also loved the gardens. She was told that the local people were prohibited from growing tomatoes because they weren't grown in colonial times.

There was such a shortage of places for women to stay that the historical homes allowed them to stay there at night. These poor women had to be out of the buildings by eight in the morning and couldn't go back to their beds until after ten at night. None of their belongings were to be seen during the day. It was most inconvenient for them and Barbara felt fortunate to be living in her own room. She paid one dollar per day, which she felt was outrageously high.

The landlady liked Barbara and permitted her to keep milk in the refrigerator. This made it possible for Barbara to have a cold cereal for breakfast without having to go out to eat. The restaurant was only about three blocks away and handy for dinners, but always crowded. There was, however, a sumptuous officers' club, and if Morris was able to get away from his battalion they would eat there. Barbara especially loved the cornbread.

One day Barbara and Morris had just left the officers' club and were walking back to the apartment. They were on a dirt path walking behind two seamen. In the distance they could see an officer and his wife coming towards them. Barbara could hear the sailors talking to each other. One said to the other, "Here comes an officer with his wife, let's salute to make her feel he's important." Sure enough, as they approached the couple, the seamen gave a smart salute. At that time there were so many officers and seamen in the small town that if they saluted everyone they would be in perpetual motion, so saluting on the street was unusual.

Another day Barbara had walked uptown to the restaurant for lunch. As usual, it was jammed with diners, but fortunately Barbara found the last table. Soon an enlisted man asked if he could sit at Barbara's table and, of course, she said he could. Barbara did not expect Morris to be able to get away from the base that day, but he had managed to get permission and came to the restaurant looking for her. When he arrived at her table the seaman jumped up and apologized profusely. "I just sat here, Sir, because there was no room. Sir, I will find another place, Sir." He took his plate and left. Barbara didn't understand why he was so upset. So far as Morris was concerned, he could have stayed there, but they were new in the Navy and didn't understand all the protocol.

Barbara was trying to eat a proper diet for herself and her baby, so she ordered a vegetable plate. Having taught home economics and having grown up on a farm, she laughed when she saw the contents of her "vegetable plate." It was covered with only starchy foods--macaroni, rice, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and mashed red beans. But she understood that fresh produce was in short supply in the overcrowded military towns.

One of the girls staying in Barbara's rooming house had a job as telephone operator. She told about calling all over the country to different Navy camps. She mentioned that she had tried to place a call to "Valley Joe near Treasure Island, California," but the local operator didn't know what she was talking about. Having lived a time in Northern California, Barbara thought she knew that country well, but she could not place the town either. When Morris came in from camp she asked, "Where is Valley Joe?" He laughed and said "You mean Vallejo?" After Barbara told her friend how to pronounce the name of the town, she said that the calls always went through.

Williamsburg had only one movie theatre and Barbara would see sailors lined up in long lines trying to get in. She would have enjoyed watching a movie, but Morris had an aversion to lines and as a result they never did see one.

When May arrived, Barbara and Morris knew it was time for Barbara to go home to Utah to be with her parents. Barbara walked the three blocks to the train station to get her ticket. She had waited as long as possible. Her mother had been worried that she might have the baby on the train. This was happening quite often at that time, as young pregnant women all over the country returned to their homes to give birth. Morris had not shipped out yet and did not know where he might be going. On the way back from the train station, Barbara began sobbing. She tried to control her emotions, but the street seemed empty and she thought no one would notice. She didn't know if she would ever see Morris again. She passed a home where the woman was out watering her lawn. The woman saw she was crying and came over to the fence and said, "I was happy when I was expecting our babies. You shouldn't cry." Still sobbing, Barbara said, "I'm not crying because I'm pregnant. I'm crying because I have to leave and I may never see my husband again."

It was a sad and uncertain time for young couples all across the country.

Barbara left on May 4, 1943. The train ride to Utah was long, taking about sixty hours and encompassing two nights. The passengers were not served lunch and Barbara was famished by early afternoon. When the train made a brief stop at a small station, a sailor ran into a store by the tracks and came back with some hardboiled eggs. Taking pity on her, he gave Barbara one. It was a time of food-rationing and she supposed the railroad company was taking advantage of the shortage to cut back on costs.

On the ride home the dogwood was in bloom and the scenery was beautiful. Barbara noticed how changed things looked compared to when they had arrived in February. They had traveled from California to Virginia and everything looked bleak; the trees were bare and the colors muted. Now, as the train wound through the rolling hills, the countryside was green and flowers were blooming in the towns.

It was good that Barbara had returned home when she did, as I was born on May 25, two weeks early. In those days long distance calls were rare and people could not call patients in a hospital, but as soon as Barbara returned home, Morris telephoned. Barbara said, "I think all I did was cry. I'm sure I bragged about what a cute baby we had, but that's another story."

Dawn and I have been watching Ken Burns’ excellent new PBS documentary about World War II called simply “The War.” Burns and his co-director, Lynn Novick, have been working on the project for six years and the result is a 14 ½ hour, seven part series of images that are memorable, moving and graphic.

In this documentary we’re reminded again that that war is basically a young man’s game—young men under the control of a few old men. It takes the kind of disregard of danger that only the young have to staff a war machine. As one of the talking heads featured in “The War” said about his enlistment, “And then suddenly you could be a pilot or a submariner or an artilleryman or any damn thing, but it was something exciting and it was something adult. It has nothing to do with patriotism. It has nothing to do, really, with who the enemy is. It’s the opportunity to be somebody more exciting than the kid you are.”

The documentary also points up the inevitability of screw-ups in every war—ill-suited leaders, inadequate intelligence, ill-equipped troops.

One particularly memorable story was told by a soldier who observed one of his comrades looting the body of a Japanese soldier of several gold teeth--only in this instance the Japanese was not dead, but badly wounded. The American soldier was using his bayonet to extract the teeth, but the bayonet kept slipping and plunging into the mouth of the soldier, obviously causing intense pain beyond the pain of the existing wounds. Finally, feeling sympathy, another soldier shot the Japanese in the head to put him out of his misery. The first soldier continued digging out the gold teeth. This documentary is not anti-war, but anyone with eyes can see how dehumanizing war is.

I mentioned the sounds of war. We’re all used to watching newsreel footage of World War II with some sort of music score in the background. We usually don’t hear the guns because sounds generally weren’t captured in those days. But Burns and his technicians have put the noise back in war and we hear the boom of the big ship cannons and field artillery as well as the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns and the pings of the rifles. We hear the explosions of the bombs and the roar of airplane engines. We hear, as well as see, the thud of bullets striking human flesh.

Our television viewing area is equipped with surround sound and we feel like we’re in the middle of the combat. Well, at least we do so far as the sound is concerned. Of course, we don’t smell the smoke and seared flesh, or feel the rain or humidity, or experience the physical and emotional pain. We don’t freeze in the cold of a German winter or swelter in the heat of a North African desert. We can only begin to empathize with the miserable young men who were forced to experience these things.

The weakness of “The War” is that occasionally it doesn’t relate the history very clearly. While some general maps are used, I would like the use of more and better maps and charts. Give us a real history lesson—help us put things in their proper place and order. Also, it was frustrating in several instances to hear the documentary criticize unnamed generals and decisions that were made, but omit the background of the decision or identify by name the leader who was being criticized. Finally, the use of some of the people from that era as talking heads was good, but sometimes we got too much of the stories of just a few people. I wish they had been a little more selective as to what they used from any one person and broadened their search to the sorts of participants that haven’t been covered. So far we haven’t heard from women who actually served in the armed forces, for instance, as opposed to those who stayed home. And what about the millions of servicemen who did not see combat, but who were critical to the war effort? What about the SeaBees (Naval Construction Battalions), for instance, where thousands of men such as my father served, building airfields, harbors and other important military infrastructure? Finally, I would like to hear more from medical personnel--medics who served in the field and doctors and nurses who served in the hospitals. What stories they might have told!

The first three episodes of “The War” were shown on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. When Wednesday came and no new episodes were on tap until the next Sunday, Dawn and I decided to rent the award-winning HBO series “Band of Brothers,” a drama produced by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks, based on Stephen Ambrose’s best-selling book of the same name. This great series makes up for the occasional lack of drama in the Burns documentary. It emphasizes the terrible cost of war in a way that only a fictional rendition can do. Of course, the series is based on fact, and the director uses talking heads as well to bring home the fact that it depicts real men and is based on real events.

Among the most striking images in both “The War” and “Band of Brothers” are the videos of the parachute drops. It is simply incredible to see the sky literally filled with old-style parachutes and to contemplate the dangers these men were facing. There was the terror of jumping into thin air, the worry about whether the chute would deploy, the danger of hitting another jumper, the danger of landing in a bad place (a tree, a lake, a rooftop, or in the face of enemy guns). And then there was the problem of finding your comrades after the jump and engaging an enemy who had the advantage of superior firepower and knowledge of the terrain.

We are reminded by these programs that World War II was different from the current war in one overarching aspect—it was a war we were forced to fight. America was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and there was really no alternative. We did not initiate the attack, as we have done in Iraq. Also, in World War II we had dictators who were bent on world conquest—who had already expanded their territory throughout much of Europe, Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific. In Iraq we had a man whose only excursion outside the boundaries of his own country was his ill-fated attack on Kuwait, which we had successfully squelched ten years earlier.

Dawn’s Father, Donald Glen Parrett

With our minds on World War II, we naturally began thinking of our own family’s participation in that war. Dawn’s father, Don Parrett, was young, unmarried, and an enlisted man in the Navy. He spent most of the war working in a torpedo-making factory in Hawaii. He was a wonderful baseball player who might have had a major league career if he hadn’t developed a heart problem. While in Hawaii he was the star shortstop and cleanup hitter for the Hawaii Islanders, a service baseball team that won a Hawaiian Islands championship while he was there. Dawn has a number of newspaper clippings extolling his abilities. It was good for the men to have diversions while engaged in the war support effort, and the baseball teams provided that for players and spectators alike.

My Father, Morris Alma Thurston

My father has written about his war experiences in his excellent autobiography, Long Trail Winding, and the following uses that book as a source. On December 11, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he was thirty years old. He managed to pay his way through college during the Depression years and had graduated from Utah State University with a civil engineering degree in June of that year. He had married my mother, Barbara Ashcroft, in July. He was not one of the young men for whom the war seemed to offer a glamorous opportunity. In December 1942, however, seeing that his experience could be useful to the war effort, he applied for a commission in the United States Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps. In February 1945, he was ordered to report to Camp Allen, just outside Norfolk, Virginia, for basic training, and then he was transferred to Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia. He was eventually assigned to the newly organized 107th Naval Construction Battalion (SeaBees) and became the battalion personnel officer.

My mother, who was pregnant with me, accompanied my father to Virginia. Some other time I want to write about her experiences in trying to find living accommodations in a town that was blue with Navy personnel. It deserves its own story. My mother left Virginia on May 4 to return to her family’s home in Hyde Park, Utah, and that’s where I was born on May 25.

Other Sea Bee battalions constructed harbors and air bases in the Caribbean, the Azores, North Africa, and Normandy, but my father’s battalion was to work on the most ambitious project of all—constructing airfields for the B-29 Superfortress bombers in the Mariana Islands of the Pacific.

A construction battalion normally consisted of about 1,000 enlisted men and thirty officers. Dad’s rank at the time was Ensign. The battalion departed from Virginia on September 4, 1943 and arrived at Camp Parks, near San Francisco, California six days later after a long and uncomfortable train ride. Being personnel officer, Dad was able to get his leave papers processed the day he arrived and by evening he was aboard the Southern Pacific Challenger bound for Utah to visit my mother and see his son for the first time. After ten days of visiting friends and family in Utah, he traveled back to California. In November 1943 the battalion transferred to Port Hueneme, near Ventura, California, and my mother and I followed. My father was able to visit his family almost every night.

Then on February 20, 1944, this good life ended when the battalion shipped out for Hawaii aboard the Sea Pike and my mother and I returned to Utah. The officers and men of the 107th expected they would stay for awhile in Hawaii, but my father and his friend, the battalion’s surgeon, Dr. Dee Robbins, took the precaution of doing some sightseeing around Honolulu, eating dinner at the Moana Hotel. They were glad they didn’t let grass grow under their feet, because the very next day the battalion got orders to load up and sail again. Their destination was Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Kwajalein Atoll

The Marshalls are a cluster of thirty-one atolls and hundreds of reefs stretching across 400,000 square miles of ocean in the Western Pacific. Each atoll consists of a group of islands encircling a lagoon. Japan had been given control of the Marshalls by the League of Nations after World War I and had begun illegally fortifying the islands and building airfields on them in the 1930s. The Japanese used the islands as a base from which to launch attacks on Australian and Philippine sea lanes. In January 1944, the U.S. set in motion “Operation Flintlock,” which was designed to gain control of these strategically important islands. Planes repeatedly bombed the islands preparatory to the invasion. Kwajalein was the Japanese administrative and communications center for the Marshalls, and it was a primary target for our bombers. In early February 1944, after four days of fierce fighting, Kwajalein and the Marshalls fell into Allied hands. Then they sent for the SeaBees to clean up the mess and make the islands usable for our troops and planes.

It took Dad’s battalion a week to steam from Hawaii to Kwajalein. They crossed the International Date Line on Saturday night, March 4, which meant that the next day was Monday, March 6. When they arrived at Kwajalein on Wednesday, however, they learned that the Navy had not changed the date because the atoll was so close to the date line. Therefore their Wednesday, March 8, lasted forty-eight hours and the sun rose and set twice.

Kwajalein Atoll consisted of a circle of small islands enclosing a beautiful lagoon. Most of the islands had a lush growth of tropical trees and shrubs. Within the lagoon the water was quiet and peaceful most all the time. The SeaBees’ home was on Ebeye, an island one mile long and about one-quarter mile wide. It had been a seaplane base for the Japanese. After the Army had captured the main island, they had set up big guns there and shelled Ebeye, making it a mass of destruction. When the 107th SeaBees arrived, only one tree was still alive and the stench of death was sickening. After a few days, they had burned or buried most of the debris and had begun building living quarters. They were to spend the next six months rebuilding a seaplane ramp and developing a recreation facility for soldiers and sailors to rest and relax.

There were four enlisted men who were Mormons in the battalion, along with Dr. Robbins and Dad. They decided to hold their own church services and “elected” Dad to be their leader. As my Dad explained, “We had some good meetings each Sunday, and soon we had a few men coming to our meetings from ships anchored in the lagoon. Somehow the word spread and they found us. Men who had been inactive at home came to our meetings and enjoyed them. Our chaplain helped us by allowing us to use the chapel area and by advertising our meetings.”

On April 1, 1944, Dad was promoted from Ensign to Lieutenant, Junior-Grade (Lt. jg). His job was still mostly paper work—reporting on the activities, changes and promotions of about 960 men and thirty officers. He occasionally went out to the construction sites to observe the progress and always regretted that he couldn’t be involved professionally in the design and construction work.

The SeaBees’ work in the Kwajalein Atoll was designed to prepare them for their most important purpose, which was to build airfields on the island of Tinian in the Marianas Group. On September 1, 1944, they received word that their island was to be turned over to the Marines and that all the men and construction equipment were to be loaded L.S.T.’s and sail for Tinian.

The 107th SeaBees battalion was loaded on three different ships. When Sunday arrived they were still en route. The battalion had only one chaplain, and he had not been assigned to our ship. Commander Ritter, who knew Dad had been active in organizing the Mormon group on Kwajalein, gave him the assignment to conduct a general church service for all the men on my ship. This he did, appointing himself to be the main speaker.

Tinian Island

The Mariana Islands were located about 1,500 miles southeast of Japan. They became a key United States objective in 1944 because of their importance as potential staging sites for the conquest of Japan. Code named “Forager,” the operation to invade the Marianas began June 14, 1944, one week after the Normandy invasion. More than 800 ships were dispatched for the invasion.

The main islands of the Marianas were Saipan, Guam and Tinian. There was a month of heavy fighting before Saipan fell on July 9, 1944. Then attention was turned to Tinian. The Japanese organized fierce bonzai charges, but by August 12, the last pockets of Japanese had been eliminated and Tinian was secured. Nearly 5,000 Japanese soldiers lost their lives on Tinian.

The 107th SeaBees came ashore on Tinian a month after it fell and established their camp in a sugarcane field. The officers’ area was in a grove of papaya and banana trees. They soon began construction of seven airstrips capable of accommodating the B-29 bombers that were to be sent on missions to Japan. Each airstrip was nearly two miles long and as wide as a ten-lane freeway. Tinian was well suited for such construction. It was a reasonably flat island, with no mountains, but there were fifty-foot bluffs around most of the oceanfront.

The United States would eventually send as many as a thousand bombers over Japan each day, and six hundred of those flew from Tinian. The SeaBees had built the largest airport in the world at that time.

Despite the war effort all around them, Dad tried to keep in touch with the spiritual side of life. One Sunday shortly after their arrival, an LDS chaplain named Gerald Ericksen came over to Tinian from Saipan and held a meeting at the Island Command chapel for all the LDS servicemen. Dad was sustained as president of the Tinian branch of the Church at that meeting. As Dad says, “We got good participation from our LDS servicemen and our services were the best attended on the island. As a result, the Island Command officers gave us the preferred meeting time in the main chapel at 6:00 p.m. each Sunday. Our attendance usually ran from 80 to 110 men.”

While Dad was on Tinian, he often listened to “Tokyo Rose,” who broadcast American songs, including many by the most popular big bands and singers. There were actually a number of Tokyo Roses; most were United States citizens of Japanese descent who worked with the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation to broadcast music and commentary aimed at discouraging American servicemen. Tokyo Rose would give reports of Japanese victories, pass on bogus casualty figures for United States military units, and even tell tales of wives and sweethearts back home being unfaithful. But Dad said her music was the best available. He enjoyed listening to her programs and simply ignored the propaganda.

Dad wrote letters home almost every day and my mother wrote to him with the same frequency. He usually got two or three letters at a time, but always opened them in chronological order. The censor reviewed the letters he sent, so when Mom received them, they often had things cut out. He was not supposed to tell her where we were or what we were doing. Before Dad went overseas, however, they had worked out a code to enable Mom to know Dad’s location. Somewhere in the first paragraph he would write a sentence using words beginning with the letters of the place he was stationed. For example, he might write, “This is not intended as news,” from which Mom could glean that he was on Tinian.

There were two bombing raids on Tinian by the Japanese air force, but no one was seriously injured. The planes came in really low to avoid detection. One pilot flew right over the SeaBees camp, but he was so low that the bomb he dropped just skidded along the ground without detonating. That was their biggest scare. Japanese reconnaissance planes often flew over the island to take pictures, but they flew very high so the anti-aircraft guns could not reach them.

One of Dad’s most exciting forms of entertainment was to go down to North Field to watch the B-29 bombers return from their missions. It was a long flight to Japan for those days, and when bombers returned they would have used up nearly all their fuel. This meant they would come in “stacked up.” The SeaBees had built 7,000-foot runways—longer than the B-52s required. In order to save time, one plane would land on the end of the runway, at the same time another would land in the middle and a third would be taxiing off the other end. Also, on occasion, whole squadrons of fighter planes, such as P-38s and P-51s, would swoop in and land on the island. Dad said, “Watching these displays by our fighters and bombers was like attending a spectacular air show.”

The Wine Mess Officer

Before the battalion left the States, the officers had established a “wine mess” and set about purchasing wines and liquors to take overseas. In order to get a good supply of liquor, they needed to raise funds for the initial purchase. The non-Mormon officers asked the two Mormons officers if they would buy a “share” in the wine mess for fifty dollars each. Dad and Robbins agreed even though they didn’t drink, viewing it as an investment that should at least return their capital later as the beverages were sold.

The construction supplies included some pontoons that were to be assembled into barges. Each pontoon was a cube measuring about six feet on each side and made of 3/8-inch sheet steel. The SeaBees cut a door opening in one of the pontoons and packed it solid with cartons of whiskey and wine.

Then they welded the door back in place. When they arrived on Tinian, they cut the door open again, then fitted it with steel hinges, hasp and lock. This became the officers’ liquor supply store. A “Wine Mess Officer” was elected, and he would open up the mess once a week and sell the officers their weekly ration of liquor. Officers were permitted to use hard liquor and wine on a “ration” basis. Each officer was permitted to purchase a fifth of liquor and a quart of wine each week. Enlisted men were limited to beer, which was sold to them in the “canteens.” Dad became very popular, as many of his fellow officers sought to buy his ration. The wine mess turned out to be a good investment for him, as he eventually got $116 back on a $50 investment.

Dad explained how it was that he became the Wine Mess Officer: “The officers would meet once a month to review the wine mess status and decide on new purchases. I never attended these meetings—usually I would be out playing tennis. About a year after we arrived in Tinian, the Wine Mess Officer asked to be relieved of his assignment. One morning, when I returned from playing tennis with Dr. Hurlbut, I found out I had been elected in absentia to the office. When Island Command was notified of the change, the commander got a good laugh and said, ‘At least they didn’t elect a rat to guard the cheese.’”

The War Ends

In 1945 many events of international importance took place, and the war in Europe drew to a close. On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died. His vice president, Harry Truman, was inaugurated as the new president of the United States that same day. On April 28, Benito Mussolini, his mistress, and eleven compatriots, were executed after a short trial. Two days later Adolf Hitler committed suicide. On May 7, Germany surrendered unconditionally.

During this same time frame, the United States forces began to close in on Japan. The Army and the Marines hopped from island to island, gradually retaking territory that had been conquered by the Japanese. Dad heard about the bloody battle on Iwo Jima, and the United States forces’ move to Okinawa, just southwest of Japan, where the fighting was unusually fierce. On July 26, 1945, President Truman issued a proclamation at the Potsdam Conference calling for the “unconditional surrender” of Japan. The Japanese refused to do so.

By August 1945, the military brass was making plans to invade Japan, if necessary. The 107th Naval Construction Battalion was one of the units scheduled to go ashore early in the conquest. Thankfully, that never became necessary. A bomber squadron, whose members had received special training to prepare them for carrying and delivering atomic bombs, arrived on Tinian in the summer of 1945.

On August 6, 1945, at 2:00 a.m., a B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay took off from the Tinian air strip bound for Japan to deliver the first atomic bomb ever detonated in wartime. Later that day the mission was successfully accomplished when the bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Dad knew the bomb had done lots of damage, but the war had been going on so long that he was not very optimistic that it would end the conflict. On August 10, he wrote to my mother:

“I suppose the prophecies concerning the end of the war are really running thick and fast at home now, what with the atomic bomb and Russia entering the war against Japan. I think they are all good signs and will definitely shorten the war, but I don’t look for any immediate surrender. I would like to be wrong in that guess.”

His prediction proved wrong. After a second bomb on was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan announced its unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945. The peace accord was formally signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2. Dad’s brother Bruce was aboard an aircraft carrier anchored in Tokyo Bay on that historic day.

My father had the same opinion about the atomic bomb that nearly every American had in those days. He understood that the use of the bomb was a horrible thing and that the decision to use it was not to be taken lightly. He understood that it resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. But World War II was an incredibly devastating event that had been precipitated by the aggression of the German Reich and the Japanese Empire. Millions of soldiers and civilians had already died because of it. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was unprovoked by any similar act of aggression on our part. Everyone knew the Japanese soldiers and sailors had been brainwashed by their leaders to such an extent that they were willing to commit suicide rather than surrender. Dad, like most people of his era, believed that an extended invasion of Japan, with fighting on the ground and conventional bombing, would have killed more people than the atomic bombs did. Many experts agree. Some revisionist historians now dispute that conclusion.

There seems to be no question that city to city, street to street, close combat fighting, coupled with traditional bombing, would have been bloody beyond comprehension. The ultimate outcome was not in doubt when the bomb was dropped. It is just a question of how much killing at close quarters would have to be done before Japan surrendered. In the Ken Burns documentary we see huge stacks of bodies rotting in the streets of Manila when the Japanese eventually abandoned that city. It was a sickening sight.

War is a hell best avoided.

Suddenly Dawn came running out of the house. Thinking I was leaving, she began waving her arms frantically. My first thought was that something terrible had happened—perhaps an injury to a family member.

I pushed a button and the window slid down. “Matt just called,” she said, the concern apparent in her voice. Instantly the thought flashed through my mind—had something happened to Quade, our five-week old grandson? It had been twenty-three years since we lost our daughter, Elise, to sudden infant death syndrome, but I still carried an anxiety about the safety of children that would surface at the least hint of danger.

“They’ve blown up the World Trade Center in Washington. I’m going to turn on the TV.” With that, Dawn ran back into the house.

I turned off the car motor and went back into the house. When I reached the family room, the television was on and everything was confused. Apparently an airliner had struck one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. There were the photos on the screen showing flames pouring out of some of the upper floors. Had the plane accidentally crashed into the tallest building in New York City? Although the commentator asked the question, the answer seemed obvious. The New York morning was sparklingly clear. No pilot could have mistaken where he was.

So had a hijacker taken over the plane and forced the pilot to fly into the tower? This was the theory being advanced when we began watching, but that too seemed foolish. How could a pilot have been forced to crash into the tower? He would have known his own death was inevitable. Would he have caused the deaths of hundreds of others under such a circumstance? No—the plane must have been piloted by a terrorist. But this added an entirely new dimension to hijackings as we had known them. Terrorists couldn’t pilot commercial airliners, could they?

These were all thoughts that Dawn and I passed back and forth as we watched the images on the screen with horror. The scene switched to Washington, D.C., and the pictures showed smoke pouring out of the Pentagon. The announcers seemed as confused as we were. A plane had apparently crashed into the Pentagon, they said, but they couldn’t get a good camera angle on the damage, so it was difficult to say how serious it was. Now it was clear to us that terrorist attacks were being coordinated.

The scene shifted back to New York City, where the television images were clear and unambiguous. Suddenly, another airliner appeared in the picture and smashed into the second tower. We gasped in disbelief. Could this be real? Were we watching the Twenty-First Century equivalent of “War of the Worlds?” Surely someone would soon tell us this was a television drama, not reality.

But it was real. It was September 11, 2001, a day that would set in motion changes that would affect the daily life of all Americans from that day forward. For my parents’ generation, the bombing of Pearl Harbor served as the most memorable image in their lifetimes. For my generation, it was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, or perhaps the first walk on the moon. For our children, it will be 9/11.

We continued watching, riveted with what was happening on the other side of the country. Were other planes in the skies at this very moment flying toward other targets? All flights across the country had been cancelled. Rumors flew. Reports were coming in of an airliner that had crashed in Pennsylvania. “We have no indication that this had anything to do with the other hijackings,” the television commentators said, but we who watched knew otherwise. Of course it did. And why had it crashed? Because the passengers or crew had challenged the hijackers. It was the most sensible explanation, but the ultra-cautious network news people seemed reluctant to advance speculation. But what other explanation could there be? Where was the fourth plane going? Nobody seemed to know, but logic suggested it was headed for Washington. What better place for terrorists to target than a public building in the United States capital? The only question on our minds was whether the target had been the White House of the Capitol building.

The cameras were back in New York City showing long shots of the burning buildings, with smoke billowing out and blowing across all of Manhattan. The commentators were telling us some people were jumping from the upper floors of the towers, preferring to die that way rather than being burned to death. No jumpers were shown on television, but the horror these people must have faced made us queasy and brought tears to our eyes. People were pouring out of the towers, we were told, and firefighters were helping, though it seemed impossible that they could be of any use to the people trapped in the floors above where the planes had hit.

Then, as we watched, the south tower suddenly collapsed. The scene was surreal—as though the collapse was being telecast in slow motion. One moment a 110-story tower stood with smoke and flames pouring out, and the next moment there was nothing but thick smoke billowing through the streets of Manhattan. People were screaming and running away as fast as they could. It was like a horror movie, but it was real. The collapse was shocking—nobody had predicted it. Why would it collapse? Had bombs been planted at the base? Would the second building follow suit?

That last question was answered about a half hour later when the north tower also collapsed. What had been the signature buildings of New York City were suddenly gone. And how many hundreds, perhaps thousands of people had perished in the disaster? Later we learned that almost 3,000 civilian victims had died—people who had nothing to do with whatever wrongs the terrorists were seeking to avenge.

Several hours later I went to work. Dawn questioned whether it was safe to go up in an office tower, but I reasoned there were much more attractive buildings for terrorists to hit than a 21-story tower in Orange County, California. By then we knew that all flights had been grounded. The attacks seemed to be over for the time being, but what would be the fallout?

Over the next few days the extent of the horror became apparent, as we saw images of the rubble that buried countless bodies, saw still photos of the jumpers, and saw interviews of tearful New Yorkers looking for lost husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. Work was disrupted for everyone and travelers were stranded throughout the country. We had no personal acquaintances who were killed and for that we were thankful.

During the first few days following the tragedy our focus was on the grief-stricken families of the victims and on trying to understand who was behind the killings. President George W. Bush declared a “war on terrorism,” but what did that mean in practical terms? Four days after the attack, I wrote the following:

There are no easy solutions to this problem. A free society such as ours makes it easier for people to use terror for their own ends. We cannot put an end to terror without compromising some of our freedoms. The delicate question yet to be answered is: how much of our freedom we are willing to relinquish in order to stop the terror? Or perhaps it would be better to say, to curtail the terror?

Many people are calling for us to “attack,” but it is unclear whom or what we should attack. No sovereign nation will take credit for this, and so there is no country to invade, nobody on whom to drop bombs. The individuals who carried out the terrible missions are all dead. Afghanistan is the only government in our gun sights at the moment. Its “crime” seems to be that it is harboring Osama bin Laden, the person most of the world blames for masterminding the attacks. We have demanded that they give up bin Laden, but it is not at all clear that the leaders of Afghanistan have the ability to hand him over, even if they wanted to.

War fever seems to be in the air, but I wonder if people understand what war will mean. Have people forgotten our experience in Viet Nam? I don’t think the nation is ready for an all-out war unless the target nation has attacked us first. I know I’m not.

I don’t think enough thought has been given as to why so many people hate the United States with an intensity that would drive them to commit suicide-murder. Those who planned and carried out these attacks apparently were well-educated and otherwise well-mannered individuals. Many are characterizing them as “crazy” or “insane,” but it does not seem they were. It is unlikely that such a well-organized and well-coordinated attack, the planning for which must have taken months, if not years, could be carried out by insane people. President Bush referred to them as “cowards,” but their actions do not fit the mold of cowards. They believed strongly in a principle and were willing to die for it. It is interesting that in all of the television coverage I have seen, I have never heard any clear explanation of exactly what these terrorists were trying to accomplish. Was it revenge for some specific thing we did? Was it a misguided attempt to call attention to a particular cause? Was it an anti-Israel statement?

It will be interesting to see where we go from here. One thing seems certain. The date of September 11, 2001, will go down in the history of our country as a day of infamy, much as December 10, 1941 has. Things will never be the same again. Just how much different is yet to be determined.

Dawn and I were facing one problem that needed immediate resolution. We had been planning a two-week vacation to Great Britain and were scheduled to leave on September 21, just ten days after the attack. Mary Kaye and Terry were to meet up with us. Should we call it off? Was it too risky to be travelling?

After considering the pros and cons, we decided to go ahead with our original plans, although many of our friends thought we were crazy. We reasoned (or rationalized) that air travel was safer in the wake of the World Trade Center attack than it had been before because of the heightened precautions that were being instituted. Therefore, we went as planned and had a delightful two weeks travelling through southern Wales and England.

We rented a car and stayed in the Welsh towns of Merthyr Tydfil in Glamorganshire and Amroth in Pembrokeshire, the homes of my Rees and Reese ancestors. In Pembrokeshire we were guided by the wonderful friendly local author, Roscoe Howells and his wife, Margaret. We stayed in charming bed and breakfast houses and met pleasant, helpful people wherever we went. We toured the Museum of Welsh History, the Welsh version of Williamsburg. We saw the beautiful ruins of Tintern Abbey and visited Hay on Wye, famous for its bookstores. We also spent a night in Torquay in Devonshire, home of my favorite fictional innkeeper, Basil Fawlty. We toured the port town of Plymouth, from whence so many famous British explorations departed--Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the Pilgrims. We drove to the pleasant seaside towns of Penzance and St. Ives in Cornwall on the English Riviera.

During our second week we were joined by Mary Kaye and Terry and made our base at the Marriott Tudor Court Hotel in Maidstone, Kent. We made daytrips throughout southern England, visiting Canterbury, the Dover shores, and Stonehenge on the Salisbury plains. We also made a day trip into London and took in some shopping and a play. One of the highlights of our week was a trip to the Isle of Wight, just off the coast of southern England, where we stayed the night with Clay and Joy Nutter, friends of the Gardners. We drove all over the lovely island, where Britishers often come to vacation, and visited Osborne House, the summer home of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their large family.

Our travels diverted our attention from the tragedy at home and raised our spirits. It seemed strange (and pleasant) to hear so few voices with American accents during the two weeks. In fact, we could recall only a couple of times, outside the airport, when we ran into any other Americans.

Our flight back to Los Angeles was on Sunday, October 7. When we transferred planes in Chicago’s O’Hare airport, we were brought sharply back to the reality of a world of hate and war. We learned that while we had been in the air, the United States and Great Britain had begun bombing Afghanistan. I wrote at the end of my travel diary, “Can we achieve our objective of getting rid of bin Laden and helping to make the world a safer place? Only time will tell.”

I wasn’t strongly opposed to the bombing of Afghanistan. The newspapers made it seem like we were mainly attacking terrorist strongholds and that there would be a minimum of fighting in large cities. Also, it appeared that there were many segments of Afghan society who wanted to be rid of the Taliban. If we could capture or kill Osama bin Laden, which didn’t seem like an unreasonable goal, perhaps it would be worth the cost. At the time I didn’t understand how connected Pakistan and Afghanistan were, and how easy it would be for bin Laden to slip across the border into Pakistan and elude our forces.

Now, six years later, it is unclear just what we have accomplished in Afghanistan. Many Afghans have been killed in bloody battles and massacres. Many were members of the Taliban, but many others were civilians. It appears that the Taliban are now regrouping. The production and sale of heroin has dramatically increased and has served as a major source of funding for the Taliban. We have completely failed in our mission to capture Osama bin Laden.

A year and a half later, on March 20, 2003, the United States and Great Britain launched an attack on Iraq—a war that the administration disingenuously called “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The rationale for this war was that Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president, had “weapons of mass destruction.” Another rationale, largely believed by most Americans and seemingly encouraged by our administration, was that Hussein was somehow responsible for the 9/11 tragedy. The truth, however, was that there were no weapons of mass destruction and Hussein had nothing at all to do with 9/11.

We watched television and observed the “shock and awe” strategy of our armed forces. It was entertaining to Americans, but how was it seen by Muslims through the middle east? We watched the inevitable occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. We saw a group of Iraqis cheering as a statute of Saddam Hussein was pulled down. We wondered why so few were there. Was it a staged event? How did the average Iraqi citizen feel about the invasion by United States troops. Gradually we learned that there were opposing factions in Iraq—Sunnis (who generally supported Saddam) and Shiites (who did not). But was one faction inherently better than the other? Weren’t the Shiites even more radical than the Sunnis? Soon the rise in sectarian killings by both factions showed there were no good guys. The people we support today are likely to become our enemies tomorrow, armed with guns and training we have provided.

Almost all of my friends were strong supporters of the war and I had numerous arguments with them. I contended that Iraq posed no serious threat to the United States, even if they possessed so-called “weapons of mass destruction,” which I seriously doubted. How stupid would Saddam Hussein have to be to use WMDs against the United States? An attack by Iraq against the United States would mean immediate annihilation of the country. Why would Saddam, sitting on his piles of money and power, want that? And besides, what was the evidence that any WMDs actually existed?

My friends had lots of reasons they supported the war. Here are four of the most prominent:

• Hussein was a terrible dictator and had caused enormous suffering among his own people, who wanted him deposed. (I didn’t doubt that he was an evil man who deserved to be deposed, but was it up to the United States to do the job? What about the many other evil dictators who lead countries around the globe, some of whom we support?)

• By getting rid of Hussein we would be reducing the threat of terrorism. (But there was no evidence that Iraq posed any significant threat of terror to the United States. None of the 9/11 terrorists were from Iraq. Wouldn’t terrorists be even more galvanized if the United States were the aggressors in a war against an Islamic nation? Wouldn’t they see it as a power grab by the United States to control the flow of oil? Wouldn’t that lead to the recruitment of more terrorists?)

• This war would have an outcome like World War II. Afterwards our enemies would become friendly nations, like Germany and Japan. (We were not the aggressors in World War II. There are major differences between Iraq today and the Axis powers of the 1940s. Iraq’s Islamist allies are motivated by religious fanaticism, not by the power lust of a few leaders like Hitler and Mussolini. By attacking Iraq, did we not risk our existing alliances with Islamic nations?)

• This war would bring freedom to the region. Christian missionaries would be free to preach the peaceful teachings of Christ to the infidels. (My friends didn’t use the word “infidels,” of course, but they believed there were millions of people who were just waiting to hear about Christianity, but who were prohibited from doing so by repressive regimes. But by being the aggressors in this war, didn’t we risk alienating the citizens of these countries and drive them further towards Islamic fundamentalism, which doesn’t tolerate religious freedom?)

So the arguments went until we became tired of talking about it. In the years since the United States attacked Iraq, my sadness has only heightened. I cannot see a favorable outcome to the situation. Our young soldiers are dying for a questionable cause. Iraqis are dying at far greater rates. They seem not much closer to a peaceful democracy than they were when we attacked. It seems inevitable that we will have to leave the country sometime, and that when we do great unrest will prevail and a civil war may well break out.

Just as distressing is the effect of the war on the survivors. We hear reports of terrible atrocities committed by our soldiers. They may not be as common as the atrocities committed by Islamic fundamentalists, but they illustrate how character-destroying war can be. How many of our returning soldiers will be stricken with long-term illnesses, either physical or mental? How much of the violence will be imported back to the United States?

Last week Dawn and I saw the movie, “In the Valley of Elah.” It is a movie I would recommend to anyone, though it is rated “R,” which means that many of my friends won’t see it. That is a shame. The movie tells the story of a murder committed almost casually by returned soldiers. It is supposed to be “based on” a true story, which means that the facts have most certainly been substantially altered. But that doesn’t matter—it is clear that the message of the film (that the horrors of war can permanently warp the minds of participants) is a true one. We’ve experienced it before with Vietnam and will experience it again. Incidentally, the star of the film, Tommy Lee Jones, does a wonderful job of playing the father of a murdered soldier. He should get nominated for an Academy Award.

How will history judge George W. Bush? Will he become a hero like Franklin Roosevelt and, to a lesser extent, Harry Truman? Or will future generations look at this as one of the low points for the United States? In my opinion, no other president would have launched the Iraq war. George W. Bush’s father fought a military action against Saddam Hussein, but did not destroy Iraq. This was the son’s chance to out-do the father—to finish the job the father started. We’ll never know how much that fact played into the attack, but I believe it was significant. I doubt that future generations will revere the younger Bush.

One of the things a personal history should do is tell the feelings of the writer about major events that happened in his or her lifetime. That is the reason I’ve written this piece. I wanted to put it down on paper now, while events are still unfolding, without the smoothing out of opinion that long hindsight and great distance brings. If history suggests my conclusions are wrong, so be it. At least my descendants will know how I felt.

Not all readers of this blog will agree with my conclusions, of course, but that’s all right. Fortunately, in our country, we still are free to express an opinion without undue fear of retaliation. These are freedoms worth defending, even if it means war, as it did when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. In my opinion, however, they are not freedoms we should be forcing at the point of a gun on another sovereign nation.

Right: Morrie & Dawn

Dawn and I are relative newcomers to cruising. I took my first cruise last year, a fantastic trip on the Celebrity Millennium that began in Barcelona and ended in Venice. This year we sailed on the Caribbean Princess—a shorter and less interesting trip, but nice for family socializing. Our group included our four children, Matt, David, Ashley and Tyson, as well as Matt’s wife, Amy, and David’s wife, Melanie. Also on board were my sister, Mary Kaye Gardner, her husband, Terry, and their children and spouses, whose ages are generally the same as ours. All together we numbered sixteen. (The grandchildren were left behind.)

The Thurstons are a game-playing family—something that seems to have been passed down through the generations. I remember playing canasta with my grandmother Ashcroft when I was about twelve years old. I had traveled from our California home to Hyde Park, Utah, to spend a month with my grandparents. We played nearly every day on a card table set up in the parlor.

Left: Ashley

My parents (especially my mother) also loved games and contests of every kind. They went to their bridge nights when I was a young child, and later, when my sisters were old enough to play, we enjoyed card games such as Popeye, Rook and Crazy Eights. There were also the board games (Monopoly and Risk were my favorites) and backyard games of table tennis and shuffleboard. When cousins visited we would play Sardines or Hide and Seek (and others my sisters would surely remember).

On our cruise we entered several of the trivia contests. It turned out that there were a number of outstanding game players on board and our team won only once—the sports trivia contest. Our victory there, however, was complete and decisive. Matt did the heavy lifting assisted by a some surprising contributions by Afton.

One of the most enjoyable games was the Seinfeld trivia contest. The Gardners finished second and we were close behind. Some of the questions were easy: Q. How does Susan die? A. Licking toxic envelopes.) Some were harder: Q. What did Kramer feed his horse that gave it gas? A. Beefareeno. Some were even harder: Q. What was the name of Kramer’s horse? A. Rusty.

We thought we had won the TV theme song contest with Dave and Melanie leading the way. We got 25 out of a possible 26 points, but some other group had every single answer, an incredible feat. The only one we missed was the theme to “I Spy.”

There was a running karaoke contest throughout the cruise given the absurd name "Princess Pop Star." Five contestants from our group entered: Mary Kaye, Afton, Christian, Tyson and me.
Tyson sang the Neil Diamond song, “Coming to America” and I sang Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” Christian Gardner, who sang an Elvis Presley song, made it into the finals.

Right: Tyson (a Princess Pop Star)

Until we took our first cruise together last year, both Dawn and I were concerned that I would find the experience boring. We were used to vacations where we would see a constantly changing countryside as we rolled along in a car, bus or train. The foreign places we’ve visited have featured beautiful scenery or held great historical interest for us—places like England, Scotland, Wales, Norway, France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and China. We liked the idea of being on the move.

Somewhat to my surprise, however, I have found cruising to be a very pleasant travel alternative. I’m not bored and I love the convenience of having the same room throughout the vacation. Now if we could just control the temptation to overeat . . .

Mary Kay and Terry were also with us on our Mediterranean cruise in September 2006, when Dawn and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. MK is the closest of my five sisters to me, age-wise. The Gardners are easy-going, fun traveling companions. The places we visited were places we had always wanted to see—Barcelona, the French Rivera (Nice and Monte Carlo), Florence, Pizza, Rome, the Amalfi Coast, Pompeii, the Greek island of Santorini, Athens, Dubrovnik, and Venice.

Left: Terry, Mary Kaye, Morrie & Dawn in Barcelona (September 2006)

We stayed extra days at the beginning in Barcelona and at the end in Venice. We had never been to any of these places, so all were stimulating. We took long day-trips in many locations—grueling, but rewarding.

I learned to look forward to the sea days when we could relax onboard the ship. I enjoy digital photography—not only taking pictures, but editing them—and I spent a fair amount of time on sea days in the computer room with Photoshop.

By comparison, our Caribbean cruise wasn’t nearly so interesting. Having survived two melanomas and numerous basal cell carcinomas, I wasn’t interested in spending time in the sun. We visited Princess Cays in the Bahamas, but only long enough to test the Caribbean waters for a few minutes.

Right: Ashley ziplining in the top of the jungle

We spent a day in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and all of us (except Dave and Melanie) went on a “canopy adventure” (a series of connected ziplines down the mountain above the jungle canopy). We looked pretty foolish in our harnesses, but I got a photo anyway. I found the Caribbean heat and humidity to be oppressive, but it could have been much worse, and we were mostly in the shade. The aromas of the jungle mixed with the perspiration of the tour participants to provide a pungent experience. There was a fair amount of hiking involved, and when we returned in the late afternoon, we were all exhausted.

The next day we stopped at Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands. I took that as a “Morrie day” and didn’t even get off the ship. I worked out, got a Swedish massage (my first ever) and a haircut. I mostly relaxed and read for the rest of the day.

The last stop was Cozumel, an island off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Tyson and I elected to bypass the island and instead took a ferry to the mainland and then a bus tour to the ruins of the Mayan city of Tulum. For me, this was the most interesting activity of the trip. I enjoyed recreating in my mind the grandeur of this city when several thousand Mayans lived there. It is the only Mayan city overlooking the sea, and it is magnificent. Our guide, who was of Mayan heritage, dribbled out a few historical facts, but I would have liked a fuller explanation of the people who lived there and the activities they engaged in. I should have researched these things before I came, or at least brought a book about the Mayans with me, but I didn’t. I purchased a thin book outside the ruins, but it wasn’t well written and didn’t satisfy my curiosity.

Above: Matt & Amy

The tour company had scheduled far too much time at Tulum—several hours when ninety minutes would have sufficed. Tyson and I slowly walked around each crumbling stone structure, taking photographs and talking, and then walked back to the shopping area and sat in the shade drinking sodas. Although there were sea breezes that kept the temperature down, we were covered with sweat.

The extra time gave me a good opportunity to visit with Tyson, who, at 28, is our youngest child. Tyson moved to Chicago a couple of years ago, so he is the only member of our family living outside Southern California. I enjoyed catching up on his life and plans. He is a musician—a piano player, guitarist and composer.

Right: Dave & Melanie

Ty recently quit as the keyboardist for the Chicago-based band, “Head of Femur” to concentrate on his own music and is looking to join up with another band. He is also in the process of setting up as a piano teacher. He currently has about eleven students. Since he does not have a piano at home (he shares a house with several roommates), he has to teach in his students’ homes. This limits the number of students he can take, as well as where he can teach. Nevertheless, he earns enough to pay for food and rent while he pursues his musical dream.

Tyson and I also talked about how much different the attitudes of young people today are towards marriage, compared to what they were a generation ago. Dawn and I came from a conservative religious background. We believed (and still do) that marriage and a stable family life are of utmost importance. We did not believe in trial “marriages.” For us, once we decided we loved each other, we wanted to commit to each other.

Left: Tulum

Marriage was the logical next step. When we made that decision, Dawn was eighteen and I was twenty-two. Both of us were college undergraduates and we knew sacrifices would be necessary. Dawn was prepared to drop out of college to earn money to support us while I attended law school. We also believed in the value of raising children and by the time I graduated from law school, Matt had been born.

In our era, most women didn’t work outside the home—certainly not wives of lawyers—so Dawn could have been content to stay home and raise a family. Instead, after I took a position with Latham & Watkins and we moved back to California, she enrolled at UCLA and got her bachelors degree. Many years later she went back to school again to get a masters degree and now teaches life story writing.

Right: Tyson and Kristin

The path to marriage hasn’t been so straightforward for our children. Both Matt and David were in their thirties when they got married. Ashley and Tyson are still single. Tyson has a girlfriend—Kristin—whom he thinks a lot of. We have met Kristin and were greatly impressed. She is an artist who would like to pursue her dream, much as Tyson would like to pursue his. At the moment, the two dreams seem incompatible with marriage and family, for which I am sorry, even though I understand.

The tour to Tulum was an expensive side trip, but when I returned to the ship I discovered it would have been much cheaper if Dawn had come along. She had made the most of her time in Cozumel, buying everything from jewelry to watches to vanilla.

And now we’re ready to sail home.

One reason is the power of deadlines.

I’ll explain. Dawn and I are constantly urging people to write their life stories—to leave a tangible record of their life’s experiences. The main excuse we hear for not writing is: “I can’t find the time.” (This is my own favorite, by the way.) I suspect the real reason is the absence of a deadline. We all find time to do the things that have to be done. I spent my entire legal career working against deadlines. If there’s a closing date, I’ll get it done.

Another reason for blogging: While lots of folks do it, not many of them are my age. We sexagenarians need greater representation in the blogosphere! Perhaps if I write about my life, it will inspire you to write about yours. It may give you ideas of things to write about and ways to write about them. (Or maybe my writing will be so bad you’ll learn how not to do it. You be the judge.)

Dawn, who is a marvelous writing instructor, is going to have a blog about writing at her site, Memoir Mentor. It isn’t up and running just yet, but it should be within the next couple of weeks. If you’re interested in concrete writing tips, be sure to check in with her regularly. And, by all means, check out our podcasts, posted on both our sites.

In contrast to Dawn’s blog, I see mine as more of a personal story than an overt writing lesson—source material for the memoirs I plan to write someday.

Of course, personal blogs are also great for keeping in touch with friends—old and new. My niece, Sarah Ostler Hill has a blog called Raising Redheads full of wonderful stories and photos of her young children, Ainsleigh and Donovan. Visit it and you’ll be guaranteed a smile when you see Ainsleigh going off to her first day of kindergarten.

My nephew’s wife (does that also make her my niece?), Sariah Ong Reeder, has a blog called Simply Sariah which provides much-appreciated information about her daughter Gwynneth and her new son Erik (who was born two months earlier than expected). My cousin, LeeAnn Ashcroft Smith has a blog called Time for Joy with a scrapbook containing colorful bunches of family photos.

My son, Matt, takes a more intellectual approach. He is a regular blogger on the Sunstone Blog, which discusses Mormon issues of all kinds. His latest is called On Violence and Richard Dutcher’s “Falling”, an interesting post with lively comments concerning Richard Dutcher’s as yet unreleased film.

Blogs can serve as fantastic communicative devices. Our dear friend, Liz Christensen, recently discovered a brain tumor while serving a mission with her husband, Herb, in Armenia. She was rushed home to have surgery and is currently undergoing radiation treatments. Her many friends and family all over the world keep in touch with her latest developments through a blog called Elizabeth Ann Cook Christensen, set up by her son Brad. What a wonderful way to communicate widely—something that could not have been possible when I was younger.

So there it is. This blog exists because I need a deadline to write, because people my age don’t often blog, and because others have inspired me. I hope you’ll find what I say interesting. Be sure to leave a comment now and then, since I’d like to know if anyone is reading—but, of course, that isn’t the main thing.