Tuesday, January 19, 2010

You Just Never Know


As I have been going through my dad's book hitting the delete button on anything that might land me in a $150,000 pile of trouble, I came upon the section about the General A.E. Anderson. This was the ship that not only transported my dad to India in 1944 but brought him back home in 1945. There is a great website about the ship, maintained by the men who served on the ship or descendants who are interested in this part of their family history. A couple of photos from the ship and copies of the ship's log from my dad's two trips had made their way into my book. Keep or delete?

I had tried to contact the organization via email a few years ago as I have some original "newsletters" from the return trip. Apparently someone on the ship typed up interesting tidbits and pieces of information the men on board might want to know, including their current location. I can just see the poor guy sitting at a Royal manual typewriter trying to time his down strokes with the up motion of the ship. And then how did they make the copies? But I digress...I never received an email back from anyone at the organization at that time.

So it was with little anticipation that I emailed both the CEO and Secretary of the organization last night. I explained what I was doing and what I would like to include from their website in my book. At 1:42 AM my time I received a response from the CEO. I point out the time not because I was up to read it then, but he certainly was up to send it! You know what they say about our sleeping habits as we grow older...

Harry was delighted about my book, and said to go ahead and use anything I want off of their site. Then he dropped a bomb on me. He was on both of the trips with my dad! What are the odds? First of all that he is still alive, as my dad would now be 92. And second that he was on both voyages with dad. He is going to look through his stuff and see if he has anything additional for me. He also asked that I send him information about my book as he would like to include something in the member newsletter about it. How about that?

1 comment:

Mrs. Wryly said...

See, this one has legs. Awesome!