Poppop went to school in Chile for Electrical Engineering, but by the time he'd finished school World War II was in full swing. Instead of going to college like his friends he decided to join the Chilean Navy, worried the Germans might come to Chile next. After Pearl Harbor he decided he could achieve that goal better by joining the U.S. military, so he emigrated to the U.S. and entered the USAF, where he was an Aeronautical Engineer for many years, serving from WWII until the end of the Vietnam War, where he served in both Da Nang and Saigon. I really need to start picking his brain and recording / writing down his responses.
Interestingly enough, I ran across his certificate of fitness from the U.S. selective service just recently and it had his name completely wrong. They'd listed his first name as "Jose"
5 comments:
Mike -
Definitely do the "pick the brain" thing - you will never regret doing it. My Granddad passed away when I was six, so I missed a lot of his stories. Fortunately there are a wealth of family stories that were set to paper and tape - plus the ones burned to memory. I just wish we had more from both my Grandpa and my Dad...
Get all the info you can; if you don't you'll regret it later.
pick his brain NOW, before his health starts to fail, or his mind starts to go. i started that with my grandfather too late, and now all i have is a snippet of his life.
Oh I have been Laura, and it's funny what you learn. For example I never knew his parents had two kids years before he was born. One died very young and the other died at age 18 or 19.
We talk all the time, but there's so much I don't know because I never bothered to record it or write it down.
As a teen he and his friends found a way to very quickly heat bathwater......using electricity. It worked great he said, except for the whole getting shocked thing.
...okay, i gotta meet this guy at some point.
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