The way this story fits into the family history is that I am alive today to recall and to write the tales from our family. I am not a historian in that I look up dates, but want the life tales to be passed on to others. Stories of real people, unvarnished as I was told them or as I recall them. I have had my sister and one cousin who has been jogging my memory. Thanks so much.

If Looks Could Kill

I was enlisted in the navy and after I had completed my corpsman’s training at the Great Lakes Naval center, I was assigned to the Naval Training Center in Orlando Florida. Several of the other corpsman with whom I became friends in Florida, were “druggies.” They were corpsmen as I was. It was several months before they became comfortable in offering and actually smoking marijuana and hashish with me present. As they learned about me, even though I didn’t do drugs, they began to trust me and less private in smoking.

Let me interject, I am a teetotaler and do not use alcohol or drugs. I never drank any type of an alcoholic beverage, not even a beer. I liked being in control of myself and had too much fun being myself to let go. I never told them not to drink or do drugs. It was a personal choice for them. Nothing that I would say would change them. If they were to change, it would have to come through the choices that they made.

Somehow, the naval intelligence (The people would say that “the Navy has intelligence?”) compiled a list of “druggies.” My friends were called in one at a time to be questioned. One of them saw a list on the investigating officer’s desk and who could read upside down, read the names that were included on it. It was a list all of the friends who hung out together, EXCEPT my name. My name was not on the list.

Now I come to the scary part (for me and not for you.) In their state of heightened paranoia, they huddled together and decided that it had been me who had informed on them because my name was not included in the roster.

In their fear, they decided to kill me. En mass they came to my room. (I never did find out or ask how they planned my demise. It may be fortunate that I never knew.) My roommate was one of the assassination squad and with his key they all gained entrance to the room.

Only by the grace of God I wasn’t home. I was never sure where I was at the time, because no one told me of their plan until much later.

The conspirators went back into seclusion and after things settled down, emotions cooled, and they became more rational, someone wisely pointed out that I did not do drugs and therefore my name wouldn’t have been on the list. I hadn’t do the drugs with them.

I am alive today because I wasn’t there when they looked or I would have been killed.