Christmas 1970

Christmas 1970 was fifty years ago this week. Christmas that year was terribly different for our family. It was the first Christmas without our father. Dad always worked hard to make every Christmas special for his family. Now he was gone. Taken from us by the ruptured aneurysm only five months before in July of 1970.

We were still new to our home that we moved into in November of 1968 and new to living in Harleysville. We had new traditions to make and now Dad had died and Mom was struggling. Everyone was.

It was my first Christmas in the Navy and the first time I was home with the family since Dad's funeral. In a few days after Christmas I was going to meet up with my new ship the USS Portland and going out to sea.

1970 was a very different kind of year for me. I started the year out in January working with my Dad at the Brandywine Products machine ship in North Wales. On February 6th I flew to San Diego for Navy boot camp. Later in the spring I would come home on leave for a couple of weeks and then went off to Great Lakes Naval Base near Chicago for more training. Then Dad died. I went home on emergency leave for the funeral, went back to the base and finished my training. Because of that break my orders following the A school were in error and I had to wait around Great Lakes for three extra months. I finally got my orders to report to the Portland in early January so I was able to go home for a couple of weeks at Christmas.

I really don't remember much about that Christmas. I had just turned 19 earlier in December and I was getting ready to see the world. And I missed my dad. I came home. Everyone was happy to see me especially mom. It was all very sad.

I went back down to Germantown to see my friends but I really don't remember anything about that visit over that holiday week. It's like a blur. A haze. Something to forget and I did.