Reuniting With My POW Father After Thinking He Was Dead For 3 Years

This is will you have even this is our American stories we tell stories about everything on the show, putting your send them to our American stories.com. Some of our favorites up next to story from a regular contributor and plan and is our director teacher organist and a great writer and all things World War II history. They she says with us the story of two ships sunk the attack on Pearl Harbor taken away and into the locker room in the state of Hawaii is a Huge Pl. in American history, particularly in the history of America's involvement in World War II the Japanese attacks on December 7, 1941, which launched the last into the war took place on that island. These attacks did a great deal of damage and caused a great loss of life, as well as the complete losses of three ships USS Arizona USS Utah and the USS Oklahoma. The Arizona Memorial is open to the general public as part of the World War II valor in the Pacific national monuments and it's an excellent place to visits and to remember those who were lost unlike the Arizona Memorial, the Utah and the Oklahoma memorials are actually found on Ford Island which is still used by the military as part of joint base Pearl Harbor Hickam so to see these memorials. One need special permission or if you're fortunate enough.

As we were military friends stationed in the area will act as escort, the resting place of the Utah is a rather lonely and unassuming place when we visited our party had little parking area to ourselves. By 1941 Utah was already past her prime. Launched in 1909.

She served in World War I. She was demilitarized in 1931 and repurposed as a target check for training. Utah was on the opposite side of Ford Island from the Arizona and other prime targets for Japanese planes just why she ended up having six torpedoes fired on her is an open question.

Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity, but whatever the reason, 64 of the training ships officers and crew were lost. It might have been more if Lieutenant Commander Solomon Asquith hadn't organized a rescue crew when he and others who escaped heard the frantic knocking on the whole of survivors trapped inside braiding Japanese planes still strafing the harbor they return to their sunken ship to cut the hole open and save those they could.

Utah was never salvaged. It still rests in Pearl Harbor as part of its own Memorial into tubing those who went down with her. The original Memorial for the Utah was a plaque mounted on the wrecked remains a new memorial was built in 1972. The simple white structure offers a close view of the ships remains below the raised American flag. A plaque commemorates those who are lost like the Arizona survivors survivors of the Utah at the option of having their ashes returned to the ship upon their passing to join those who never left the memorial for the USS Oklahoma is also found on Ford Island. Unlike the Utah the USS Oklahoma was still a fully active battleship on the morning of December 7, 1941 she was tied up just down battleship Row from the Arizona struck by at least nine torpedoes. It took only 13 minutes for the Oklahoma to capsize sailors try to evacuate over the starboard side, but as she rolled over hundreds were trapped inside. There are many stories of bravery from the Oklahoma's tragedy honors given to her crew include two posthumous medals of honor and one Navy Cross. One award particularly caught my eye as it was given just a couple of years ago it was given to father Aloysius H, Schmidt here just finished morning mass and was reportedly hearing confession on board the USS Oklahoma when the first torpedoes hit. He assisted 12 sailors to escape through a portal when he attempted his own escape. He became stuck. Hearing other sailors in the compartment behind him. He insisted on being pushed back into the doomed vessel so that others could escape his remains were identified recently and his family was awarded his posthumous silver star in 2017. Those who escaped the Oklahoma worked frantically for days to cut through the ships hold to rescue trapped survivors.

But in spite of their best efforts they were only able to rescue 32. All told, the Oklahoma suffered 429 losses.

The second-highest loss of life after the Arizona in memory of those lives lost 429 white marble pillars stand the Oklahoma oriole black stone marker at the memorial sums up the meaning of the place passed a portion of it reads manning the rails as Navy vessels pass through Pearl Harbor sailors and Marines stand at attention along the ship's railing and superstructure decrees dress uniforms contrast sharply against the gray vessels in full dress uniform.

The ships crew stands at attention in display of respect and honor. Coming home for a final time by manning the rails. Those white marble pillars are meant to represent those missing crewmembers who will no longer be able to man the ships rails USS Oklahoma herself no longer rests in Pearl Harbor, the Navy attempted to salvage her patching and re-floating her. However, the damages to create the Oklahoma was decommissioned in 1944 she was sold for scrap. However, in route to the West Coast.

She broke her toe and sank 17 May 1947.

I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to pay my respects these memorials. If you ever had that opportunity.

I deftly recommend a visit as well.

As we remember lives lost in sacrifices given as people fought and struggled to preserve the freedoms that we cherish and a beautiful job on the production bimonthly and special thanks to an employer for assuring the stories of the USS Utah and Oklahoma dear on our American folks. If you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past. Know that all of our stories about American history innovation culture and faith brought to us by the grateful Hillsdale College place where students study all the things that are beautiful and what all the things you kick at the Hillsdale Colville will come to you with your freedom. Terrific online courses. Hillsdale.learn more. Geico asks how would you love a chance to save some money on insurance. Of course you would.

And when it comes to great rates on insurance. GEICO can help like with insurance for your car, truck, motorcycle, boat and RV even help with homeowners or renters coverage plus at an easy to use mobile app available 24 hour roadside assistance and more. And GEICO is an easy choice switch today and see all the ways you can save it's easy. Simply go to Geico.com or contact your local agent today and we continue with our American stories, but mixed will be Genevieve Kurt Genevieve runs a very unique business in San Francisco but is the big grazing grazing is a sustainable land management organization powered by so there Genevieve tells about how business came and also with history of goats in San Francisco, beginning with the still West. The first lady goats in San Francisco have a long history and awareness raising goats in San Francisco. There is a long history.

Estelle West was raising goats and you know she was at a time when having livestock for meat for milk was relatively common still in the Bay Area that she was one of the last people who is actually in San Francisco proper, raising her animals and making her living from them. San Francisco was visibly becoming a city and didn't want livestock within city limits anymore. Estelle West was quite a character apparently and left to flout authority and she just wanted to keep raising goats the way her family had been, and so she was a mild criminal, shall we say in not keeping her goats and places where the city didn't really want goats After her this very sweet woman that I met who was the second goat lady of the sequences go. She had been raising goats on Potrero Hill which was a little bit less of a settled area in San Francisco when she was a kid. Her family had about five or six goats sometimes as many as 15 have a large of a herd and they were not dependent on them for their income but they were a part of their family's income stream and when the city was laying the first sidewalks in Potrero Hill.

Her goats got out and ran across the newly laid cement and left goat half marks in seven Cisco's first sidewalk in Potrero Hill. She got in a lot of trouble. They made her family get rid of their goats.

I met her when she was in her 80s and so I am really happy to get to carry on the tradition of life stuck in San Francisco and goats in San Francisco and of course it's also an honor to get to be the third crazy goat lady of San Francisco. I'm the executive director of city grazing. We are the last local herd of working animals in the city. We actually take and retired dairy goats and we give them kind of a second lease on my all they have to do for us is eat for a living so they go out. They eat a lot of the rash that's unwanted. A lot of the invasive vegetation that we have and both reduce fire hazard and improve the health of some of our small local forests in San Francisco city grazing was started as a little bit of just a fun side project by a man named David Gabovitch who owned a industrial waste management company and he thought it would be a fun way to advertise their commitment to green methods and keeping their waste processing very clean. By having a herd of goats that actually lived on site next door to the waste processing center. It's pretty common in California to see goats grazing on the side of the freeways, so there are a few different companies in California that do large-scale goat grazing. These are companies that have a thousand animals, or up to 4000 animals and grazing.

Really big areas alongside like Chevron's processing plants alongside the freeways, alongside some of the wind farms and solar farms in California. These are really common companies that use grazing animals to keep their fire hazard down and David saw thought it would be a lot of fun doing a small scale in the city. So he started with just a few goats didn't really think much about how goats multiply ended up pretty quickly.

Having 40 goats and that point was renting them out. He was renting in the backyards and that was in 2008 that he got started I came on board in 2012 I answered a very random Craigslist ad. I had just moved back to San Francisco was looking for a new career and found a very unusual ad that said subparagraph tell us why you're qualified to take care of our 40 goats in Bayview. While our current goatherd goes home on vacation for six weeks and I thought has 40 goats in a you baby was in estriol part of the city and nice to see SIM I grew up on a cattle ranch. I been around animals and most of my childhood and I never really thought I'd work with them again so I randomly answer this ad and we just kinda headed off. Dave and I got along very well. The goats definitely needed more care than they were getting at that time. He just had one of the employees from the railyard who was taking care of them so I just kinda never left, and in 2015.

It took over management in 2017. We converted to a nonprofit. And that's really allowed us to open up who we work with, and what we do. It lets us adopt animals rather than purchasing or breeding that lets us have more work with municipalities with schools with universities also allows us to be a little bit more proactive in our hiring policies so we really strive to give work to people who are from our underserved neighborhoods in San Francisco so it's open a lot of doors for us what we do is specialize in strips of on developed land and San Francisco has allotted that there's a lot of back hillsides or park areas that haven't been landscaped and that's where we come in and then also just backyards. We do a fair amount of backyards.

It's a lot of fun to bring somebody five goats to spend a week in their yard and their family interact and see what that's like and most of our goats are really friendly. They love people that are easy to hang out with and he would necessarily want to keep it forever but there a lot of fun for a week. The community loves the goats absolutely loves them from being completely startled to see a goat you know we get the wire there goats here are questions from passersby.

We get kids who've never seen a goat before and do not know what they are and say mommy what's wrong with that dog or donkey.

Now is my favorite question that I I've ever gotten. The goats have a lot of fans and so we always publicize it for a location where the public can calm and view the grazing and that is just an amazing side benefit of what we do.

It's really great to be able to give back to the planet. It's great to be able to contribute to the health of trees is a lot of what the goats he is the Penland blackberry which is an invasive here and on a few different forms of IV so that a lot of our work is taking care of those two plants to keep the trees and some of our parks, like the Presidio, UCSF melt Sutro's are a couple of the larger parks in San Francisco that we do a lot of work for.

It's really about tree health. It's also about fire hazard reduction but a huge part, especially in the last few years, people were just looking for anything that they could do outside with their kids. Like how we get out of the house and you can always come visit the goats right so it's just so much fun to give people that kind of outlet, and it's not just people with their kids, we got dog walkers who bring their dogs. The dodger fascinated. They've never seen goats before either. These are city dogs right they do not know what livestock is. So they have a lot of fun and the goats are so funny. You're very used to the urban environment. Goats are such adaptive animals you wouldn't put a horror resort power a sheep in some of the situations that we very happily put our goats the goats are just like okay is that the new place were staying for a week cool and they'll interact with the people of L interact with dogs, they get bored if there in one location.

As anyone who has goats can tell you goats get very bored and they will start trying to break out. They love to explore new space.

They love new vegetation and so we find they have much better manners and we are moving them around new grounds to stop on our mission is sustainable land management and that's really just about inspiring people to find creative solutions to the problems that we have what we do is so beneficial. But it's really just goats being goats. It's a very elegant solution to the problem of overgrowth or fire hazard or invasive plants because we put the goats on them and the goats don't do anything special.

They just do it. Goats do they compete with each other for food and they have a great time doing it was to join the church deferred crazy goat lady San Francisco more of her story here on L American story. We returned to our American stories into Genevieve church of Citigroup is the goat cowardly and management fire prevention organization in San Francisco with pickup with you last left off. We have so many amazing goats and they come to us from all over.

As I said most of our goats are retired dairy goats milk production drops off and it's hard on their bodies, so it's really fun for us to be able to take those ladies and and retrain them.

We take them in and just put them then basically that pastor and then leave them there for a week and when they first come to us come to the fence of the morning like is someone supposed to do something with me now don't have to go somewhere and were like this week with the rest of the goat but we also every year we try and adopt in some of the little orphan dairy boys dairy goats have to have a baby every year and were giving milk. The females go back in the dairy industry for those males usually go in the meat industry and we like to adopt a few of those in every year and raise him to the grazing goats so those little guys. They are very social. They've been hand raised by people they really turned west for all of their needs. There so much fun to interact with their really naturalized people and they have big personalities but somehow or other goats are rescue cats that have come from you name it all different situations and yes all of our goats have names from Regina the complaining dairy goat who never stops yelling at us to. We have Huck and fan who wore a pair of twins. Another pair that we have is curry and studio their original owner raised them for food.

But he bought for Ms. Davies and he love them so much.

He just fell in love with them and called us in shamefacedly said I can't eat my goats. Can you take them for me.

So we took a man but my favorite to date, actually got passed on now princess and Ludo came to us. They didn't seem to know that they were goats they were. These enormous enormous Alpine goats and they had been raised in someone's kitchen in Oakland they been raised on people food they'd never grazed they been eating breakfast cereal and apparently human food. Their whole lives. The lady who raised them was very eccentric. Her neighbors were complaining to the health department.

She reached out to us and we're like sure will take them so we went to get them out. We really think it really didn't understand that they know other than going into her backyard. They really had been outside she was keeping the house so we had to teach them how to live outside. We had to teach them how to grazed.

We had to expose them and they were adults they were both quite large and in the end both of them took over the herd. Both of them where where the alpha males in the herd and we named Princess Princess because he was so high maintenance at the same like that name wasn't really supposed to stick as he was the biggest white male goats with giant horns that you've ever seen and it was just kind of an ironic name because he didn't know how to eat or take care of himself. He was such a princess. We had to wait on him hand and before he learned how to be goat by the end he was the king and he just ruled the entire herd so those two probably are my favorite rescue story, but we have others we have goats that came to us from 4-H so therefore H kids that had raised them didn't want them to end up being harvested so they donated them to us rather than sell them at the fair.

One of them, though he he had a little accident and this was before he came to us he lost the tip of his leader and they decided he couldn't be shown as breeding stock, which was the intention when he was raised.

His name is dipper Decker looks like a small rhinoceros without horns. He's the most muscular goat I've ever seen has giant legs and huge feet and giant head. He looks like he could knock all the other goats down but he's the ultimate in gentle giant doesn't know he's strong.

He doesn't know that he's just the earliest goat ever, and he stands up the side and let's all the other goats eat first and we have to keep them in with the old ladies because he does not understand his own strength so they come to us with such cute personalities and individual natures. Goats love salt have a very high need for salt in their diet and so when you see a goat licking the inside of the tin can which, yes, that stereotype is an accurate one.

Goats will pick up tin cans that have had food in them and they will carry them around actually can't eat them. They are trying to link out whatever was inside that can if there's any residue of salt chip bag. You know what's the most common piece of letter that you see anywhere it's a Doritos bag.

They will take them in their mouth they will chew on them and chew on them and chew on them the way we chew gum and then they'll spit them out because they're just trying to suck all that salt off of the inside were goats get that reputation from what they do when we chew on plastic. We finally was a vet. It was like oh it's salt. They love roses and they love blackberries, blackberries, that's great because it's a massive problem in California with Emily and blackberry growing all over the West Coast and it's a terrible invasive plant roses not so much. Nobody really wants the goats to come and eat their price rose collection so we do after you were really intense about our fencing to make sure that Bob doesn't happen.

Homeowners associations in the Bay Area tend to I don't know why they almost all have one giant inaccessible hillside periodically needs to have something done about the fire danger and love doing it. City grazing gets about 60% of our income from our grazing work, but the other 40% of our income comes from donations and we really rely heavily on that we have a really amazing team of employees. We are out there setting fencing, clearing paths, said Cisco is big in terms of population and small in terms of acreage.

It's a tiny little city that is jampacked so we have to build really nice fences. Every time we take the goats anywhere to make sure they stay enclosed. Stay safe and make sure everyone in the situation is contained.

We also have a box truck that we converted to a mobile barn but it's essentially just like any U-Haul that you'd used to move we pull out the ramp. The goats running the ramp or run out the ramp on but it's really kind of hilarious to check out the goats getting in and out of the truck. Not what you'd expect. But it's simply been one of our best innovations. Talk about funny stories we have staged goat yoga if you missed your chance of the goat yoga trend when I was a thing.

Don't worry about it because but you really missed out on what is probably getting peed on by a baby goat. That's what we don't tell you only sell you the ticket but it was a fundraiser that we did for a while so many other crazy stuff that we've done. We have cranked a good room at a wedding. His in-laws hired us to bring goats to the wedding reception and to bring them out behind the groom while the father of the bride was making his host and we didn't know this. They didn't tell us.

I don't think they love their son-in-law very much. She was terrified of goats so it was just a scene. It was hilarious for everyone there except for the groom himself be taken goats to nightclub openings, not inside, outside, so they or their ears wouldn't get any damage done a really great promotion years and years in a row. We did about five of these called goat my Valentine where we would bring goats and stage a photo shoot so that she could come up with your sweetheart and take a photo with the goats and get cuddly with our our baby goats on Valentine's Day. That was a really fun one that we dead cell. People love goats and sterile, and there a lot of fun.

We love them where all of us at city grazing. We smell terrible at the end of the day, but we love our job and a great job in the storage only special things to Genevieve church, Executive Director city grazing goodness about some of the names will confirm Regina the complaining very goat princess and Udo enormous beltline goats would never raise in their lives. They were raised on human food in the house story of city grazing which started as a fungicide project with Delta exterior fire prevention and so much more in the city of San Francisco on L Americans continue with our American stories. As you know we tell stories about everything here in this one is a military family story unit here right now for Mike McDaniel, retired U.S. Navy Capt. so he shares with us a few defining moments of his life from way back when he was just a little bored. Growing up as the sun over Mabel deployed in Vietnam. We grew up in a family.

We had a belief gathering for the family to get together the wives of the children so weak because of a community within the aviation squadron and I remember one day I can remember like it was yesterday, the 19th beautiful day outside.

Friday afternoon happy-go-lucky third grade kid walking home from school couldn't wait to get home we can play with my buddies in the neighborhood of approach to health.

I noticed there were about a dozen cars in the driveway Wall Street, not atypical for for Navy family get-togethers. What you think it when the house was soon the Walkman health, Mrs. Miles, who was the wife of another water made my dad's dog came up and she says you can come home with me for the weekends with enlightened with Gary Larry door, her sons will come up to what good friends okay so didn't really have anything planned but sounded okay so we got in her car and on the way to her house. We stopped at a hard bite because ice cream stores at that time were really can be heaven for kids. I screamed multiple flavors we have these can be directly glibly like you, there were huge, just as I remember was a kid she said to me Michael get what they were. You want as much as you want red flag. The sub is not right here but hey what a great opportunity so I remember going up the king directed to stuff my arms glistened over her immortal and see if I was reaching the threshold she just was like you don't go out for so literally is what.

To counter the next morning she brought me back and I remember these to have these big bubblegum sticks, back when we were kids are called buddies with long sleeves, bubblegum, and I remember about five minutes out for the health most of that. Hopefully though she did let me know for goodbyes. I walked in the house.

My mom met me at the door. She said let's go back to your room. I need to tell you something so low back my bedroom. She said let me hold your bubblegum because what I tell you that.

She said that my dad had been shut down the previous day. Overview was currently in the jungle of North Vietnam.

Hopefully rescue him later.

That was the last thing we heard the next three years. So for those first three years of his six-year time away. We know things better life and remember my dad telling me when the last thing she said to me with take care of the family while I'm gone. So here we were always in the third grade. My brother was two years younger sister was only for the at the time the Navy had told my mother for us not to tell anybody be shut down family or friends.

Just like how you do that you go without a father. I remember wanting to think he was okay, but not wanting think he was okay if he really wasn't that was coming about tough thing to to think through was a young boy. It was three years later the day of the solar eclipse in Virginia Beach full four clips of the foot which comes a big deal that I had a Little League basketball chamber should be eligible, you the best ballplayer, but then I was spending the night with Petey Bowerman whose dad was our coach with the early gate 30 game was a championship game.

This Bowerman or one of Goodman the room with you.

We were just waking up.

Michael your mother's wonderful memories were to ship Michael have some wonderful news to the point in time she had said that I thought about that. Something about that would be something like the gripper to commit over the weekend or going somewhere is like a letdown this time. I remember vividly thinking the gripper to commit Jesus a list came out today. The North Vietnamese released a list of 14 names men being held officially as POWs in your deadly. We know he's a lock. It was like the weight of the world came off my shoulders. I went to the Buffalo game. None will be stored about 1012 point think of a score to I could really care less whatever with the due, the reality set in. Okay is a lot know what will this get this war over with the list given hope that was a very tumultuous time of the war now understood better.

He looks at the history of Ho Chi Minh who died some club public changes were to your place of you know what the streets will while with protesters in the antiwar movement. It was just like everything was split out of control.

Here's your deadly wishing to present somewhere and let me fast forward to when we found the coming home the cease-fire to replace the Paris peace talks when they were negotiating the investor to release the first wave of POWs over there longest, but that would be part of the second wave of prisoners, first we came home with such a joyous occasion like remember Jeremiah Denton walking off the plane doing his God bless America just wonderful and you knew what that was good be in the next wave of relief and then the treaty broke down so they delayed the release of bad dream is horrible feeling in the file you have something else would happen because of the first wave. The came out started getting their debriefings persist on it right away. They found out about what my dad had gone through 1969. The statement Navy psychologist came set them with us as children and told us your deadwood through a real rough go. There was real severe torture were not sure what kind of shape you could be in mentally and that scared me to death of like I guess I appreciate them trying to prepare a 15-year-old 13-year-old 10-year-old member being horrified by what what what the so they take off from Hanoi in we know he's on his way to the Philippines this before Internet for cable-television network television.

The play was no delay in the Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines like it for the morning our time on the East Coast so my mom comes in to each were bedrooms. What were sleep before she wishes up and takes a Polaroid picture I was sleeping before she wakes us up at the gum laying there with my dog with my mouth wide open so she wakes us up as we all got around told my mom. She's on the floor or the form told you she was played live. They bring the ladder up the open door and PW start coming out one by one. You see this guy. You could tell he was tall and is there all you see is just Bill is adjusting his built log weekly good blog in the Navy to make sure your your shirt is lined up with your picture elders in your belt buckle, just a baby and you just knew it was him. My mom dissolves the material for which she is on the floor. Just sobbing mom. Not now, not now. You gotta watch this so she never thought she saw had to seal the reruns looks good, and walks down the ladder theory is as large as life giving out free soil salinity back to be the time to come into Norfolk, Norfolk, and there were like thousands probably 10,000 people come to the airfield to watch this watch these men, they will go to Florida Travis Air Force Base boom to Naval Air Station Norfork. But it got fogged in the identified what next, you know, is like one more thing that will delay flying at Oceana and the driving from there to the hospital portal through the crowd to resolve the transferred us to the hospital. This black sedan drugs up to the conclave of the hospital door opens up pops the sky display the khaki full dress uniform wait for seven years who he was always toward the end of the year one deployment large of life looking so sharp he believes pretty skinny but he just rushes to the family. Monfort picked up my sister's arms all come together around and he says a few words in the it was like yes were there. Yes, your hearing a grown man: really rough time in his life almost breaking down in front of him.

It was like Daniel retired U.S. Navy Capt. Capt. Eugene red McDaniel filet sixes in Vietnam shut down on his first combat mission. What a great story but McDaniel story his dead story here on our American stores