Like many boys his era, my father-in-law Walter S. Robertson joined the military as soon as he graduated high school in Mount Vernon, Washington at age eighteen. It was 1936.
He enlisted in the US Navy. Training camp was in San Diego.
Walt was sent to Panama Canal aboard the
USS Bushnell (
more here) in 1937, Guantama Bay as a Submarine Tender and Norfolk, Virginia to service subs.
He developed pleurisy which was worse in the tropics and was discharged due to the illness in 1938 from Portsmouth Naval Hospital, Virginia.
Walt then met Vi when on a double date - Walt was with Wilma and Vi was dating Gordon Shea - both couples switched partners. Vi and Walt married August 31, 1941. Walt joined the Naval Reserve in 1943 when World War II was in full swing.
He went through Hospital Corps School at Farragut, Idaho
and was stationed at the United States Naval Hospital in Seattle (Fircrest). He received training as a pharmacist mate - the doctor in charge was
Wendell G. Scott who wrote text on Radiology.
After his tour was over in 1945, he returned to Mt. Vernon to his wife and baby daughter, Judy. They moved to Yakima, Washington where Walt worked as an X-Ray technician for St. Elizabeth's Hospital and four more children were born.
His career then took his family to Bellevue, WA where he became the manager of the Xonics Inc. X-Ray Co. in Seattle. He retired from there in 1982.
More Navy photos
If anyone can confirm that the beginning photos of this album are in-fact San Diego, I would appreciate it (they weren't labeled).
MMMM. That photo with all the wind-dried laundry makes me want to run in there and press my face into those linens. Nothing in the world like fresh sheets on a line.
ReplyDeleteYep, I was whistfully thinking of the days we used to line dry our clothes when I saw that photo, too.
ReplyDelete