December 7, 1941

I find that if you leave yourself open to whatever comes your way, life can have some incredible twists and turns you NEVER could have expected and couldn't have made up if you wanted to!

My dad was a perfect example. He lived an incredible life. His friends and family swear he was the inspiration for Forest Gump! Here's another one of his stories:

As a young man in the summer of 1941, newly graduated from college with a degree in journalism, he got his first professional job working at a newspaper in Silver Springs, Maryland (just outside Washington, DC.) A quiet, small-town boy from Pennsylvania, he wanted to make a name for himself in the big world.

The newly divorced, oldest son of then president Franklin D. Roosevelt had just married his young nurse whom he had met a couple of years earlier at the Mayo Clinic. And the couple had just returned to the DC area after being wed in Beverly Hills. It was quite the scandal at the time, and the young Mrs. Roosevelt was being shunned by many of Washington DC's upper society types.

Well, my dad (who always taught us the important lesson of inclusion) figured she must be very lonely in a new town where everyone looked down on her. Maybe she'd like to talk... So he showed up on her doorstep one day while her husband, Jimmy Roosevelt, was at work.

She invited him in and they had a nice visit over lemonade. She was so impressed with this young reporter that she wanted him to meet her husband and invited him to come back for dinner!

Nervous, he presented himself, cleanly shaved and freshly dressed, at the Jimmy Roosevelt's door that evening. His host greeted him coolly, wondering at the nerve of this young upstart. The three of them sat down to talk over drinks.


And before the evening was over, Mr. Roosevelt had been captivated by his young guest as well.

He wondered why a young man with brains and as much gumption as my dad had not joined the military. My father explained that, against his mother's will, he had registered for the draft, but had been rejected because of his asthma. So he had resigned himself to writing about the war effort and its heroes instead.

"Well, let me see if I can pull a few strings for you," Roosevelt said. "I have a few connections!"
The next week secret service men descended upon my dad's small hometown interviewing everyone from his mother to his third grade teacher...

They interviewed his landlady at the boarding house in Silver Springs... And before you knew it, my dad was in the navy and stationed at the White House!

He was kept busy delivering messages to the president and others. And so it was that on December 7th, 1941, it was my father, the young new ensign from nowhere, Pennsylvania, who delivered the message to the president in his private quarters when Pearl Harbor was bombed!

Once The U.S. joined the war, my dad was assigned to the Map Room in the basement of the White House where they kept track of all the troops on the different fronts. It was during the next two years that he met Winston Churchill and the Hollywood actor, Robert Montgomery (who also worked in the Map Room.) And he often pushed FDR around in his wheel chair.

In 1943 my dad joined the troops in the South Pacific, where he served on a PT boat until the end of the war. And it was there that he made the acquaintance of a young John. F. Kennedy who became a close friend of his.

I always hated history until I heard it from my dad's family and friends. (He was not much of one to talk about his life. And most of the stories I heard for the first time just before and just after his death.) I wish the man had written a book...

.....it occurred to me just today that my dad was the same age as my son, Nick, when he walked through this magical door of history! Yikes!




Liz Carson Rosas
12 May 2009