This is a picture of my father, Mike Loudis Sr., taken in Yokasuka, Japan, November, 1945. He was a 1st quartermaster, USN, and piloted the USS Dorthea L. Dix through the Panama Canal, and across the Pacific during Operation "Olympia".
One evening, while on watch in port at Newport News, Va, he saw what he knew very well was a Junkers-88 bomber; he called a general alarm, however, the alarm was cancelled and my father was relieved from duty for the evening, on account of his "seeing things". (A Junkers 88 doesn't have the operational range to fly across the North Atlantic.) The next day the naval base received word that a captured Junkers-88 had flown the coastline from Maine to Florida, as a test of coastal defenses, without a single general alarm having been called.
Mike Sr. was an architectural draftsman for the City of New York, and retired as a director of plant management for a city agency. He smoked 2 and a half packs of unfiltered Chesterfields a day, for 76 years; he and Ronald Reagan are proof why more doctors smoke Chesterfields than any other brand of cigarette. "Those filtered cigarettes will kill you", claimed my pop.
My father's friendship with tobacco probably contributed to his passing at 89. However, in as much as he was untouched by any signs of lung or throat cancer, he is probably in heaven, staring down at all the pedantic oncologist and anti-tobacco zealots with his right thumb pressed against his nose, and the remaining fingers moving as if he was playing the coronet.