Just Call Me Smitty

By Ralph R. Smith Sr.

Things happen to everyone, good and bad. Thats life. How you react to these events are stories of your life. This is mine.

By: Ralph R. Smith Sr.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 5, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469101439

Ralph R. Smith Sr.

"Things happen to everyone, good and bad. That's life. How you react to these events are stories of your life. This is mine."

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Copyright © 2007 by Ralph R. Smith Sr.

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Contents

Foreward

Twin Time

Being German

Fernandez Years

Pearl Harbor

Ba Bo

I want to be called Smith

Mennonites

Wesley

Sharpsville

The Religious Life

Mr. Stevenson

Corn

Threshing Party

Getting Electricity

Moving to the Bells’

The Plan

Great Lakes Boot Camp

Bainbridge

Philly

Fleet Marine Force

R & R

U.S.N.H. Yokosuka

U.S. Navy Skating Rink Yokosuka, Japan

Barbara

The Big Show

A Short Interruption: Korea Again

Hard Luck Ship

Who’s Going Where?

Home at Last

Insurance? What’s Insurance?

We’re Expecting

Our First Born

State Farm or AAA

The State Farm Years

It’s a Boy

1ST Millionaire Trip : 1970

Home Exchange

To be continued

Epilogue

Foreward

This story could have been named "How I Survived My Youth". Orphaned at four, he was raised by his sisters until he was twelve, changing homes and his last name every year. Ralph tells how he developed a way of surviving sometimes physical abuse as well as how key people helped him.

Having six names by age twelve and an accident that almost blinded him made him who he is today. He talks about how as a ward of the court he was placed on a Mennonite farm where he worked for his room and board. He was able to change from running away to running in sports, from fighting the world to boxing in Golden Gloves, but not without some difficulty.

How a high school teacher did some things that had a profound and lasting effect in his decisions to becoming a Corpsman and even his occupation when he got out of the service.

As a Navy corpsman he served in Korea with the Marines, learned a lot and met the love of his life in a skating rink in Japan. The courtship and the marriage are chronicled along with the birth of their three children and the difficulties of starting a business with very few dollars and a short list of skills.

Tying this together as an old man looking back, he realizes how important attitude is and was in helping him through difficult situations. This realization and the gift of being able to pass it along is what he wants as his legacy.

Twin Time

My name is Smith.

At the age of 74 and with the encouragement of my children I will attempt to describe some of what I remember about my early years. Some of the events are from collective memory, as I was too young to remember.

In 1932 at the height of the Great Depression a 38 year old second generation French lady named Mary Damm Fernandez was about to give birth to her twelfth child.

Mary was in the throes of her third divorce. She was losing custody of her youngest five children. These were the days of Prohibition and Mary had been charged with bootlegging. She had her own boarding house where she served meals and possibly some home brew to the guests.

All of the older children were out of the house, or making it on their own, one way or another. My four older sisters were married at 14 or 15. My oldest brother, Pete, was in and out of prison his whole life. I only remember him in prison. I had gone with my sisters a few times to visit him but I don’t remember ever seeing him. In later years one of my sisters said that he was killed riding the rails in California. The odd thing is that he supposedly was buried in a potter’s field in Stockton. That is just 18 miles from where I have been living for the last twenty years and where I’m sitting now.

I was born at home on or about June 7, 1932 in or near Detroit, Michigan. Irene, one of my sisters, was also pregnant and delivered her child just two weeks later.

To Mary, who was in danger of losing her newborn to her ex-husband, Tomas Fernandez, this event gave her the opportunity for which she had been waiting. This was to be the perfect solution. Let’s tell everyone that Irene had twins. The fact that we didn’t look that much alike didn’t seem to pose much of a problem, not at first.

According to the divorce papers filed in Wayne County Tomas submitted a budget of $28.00 per week and an income of $27.50. He made 68 cents and hour and working a 40 hour week gave him the $27.50 per week. Tomas had taken his five children and bought five acres of land for $250.00 outside of Algonac, Michigan. This was about seventy miles north of Detroit where he was working.

The perfect solution was that Irene, one of my older sisters, would pass me off as one of her own. So at least for a short time, I was Ralph Cornwell. Irene was divorced at the time and back living at Mary’s boarding house with her new born twins Ralph and Claude Cornwell. Mary would of course help take care of the twins. Yes, this could be a perfect solution.

It was my understanding that my sisters Patricia and Beatrice were also living in the same boarding house with two of Patricia’s children, just one big family. This seemed to work well for a few years, and then an unfortunate event changed the dynamics for everyone.

On a rainy evening in November 1936 Mary was standing in a safety zone waiting for a streetcar. She was carrying me in her arms when a drunk driver crashed into the safety zone killing Mary. She was one month short of being 44 years old; I was 4 years old and uninjured or if I was, it was minor. I did see an article in the newspaper about the accident but that was when I was in my sixties.

My older sisters Patricia, Irene and Beatrice decided on their own to raise me as their own, although none of them had the financial capabilities to do so. Not unusual for the time as the thirties were hard for almost everybody.

Beatrice was only sixteen and although she had already been married once was barely able to get by on her own.

My sister Irene was a single working mom in her early twenties, and it was all she could do to care for Claude. She was also due to give birth to Barbara, Claude’s younger sister. There was no way she could take me too.

I think they were all living with Mary and helping her in the boarding house at the time of the accident. There is some confusion as to which sister took me first. I think it was Pat, then Bea, for a couple of years. Each sister had kids of their own and in hopes that I would fit in better; they would change my last name to whatever theirs was at the time. At least this is how I was told the name game started. I went from Ralph Cornwell to Ralph Damm to Ralph Beauty to Ralph Schumacher and then to Ralph Fernandez.

When I was seven years old, I had an accident. Claude went to lasso me and I was trying to avoid him. We were playing cowboys and Indians on the front porch. It was seven or eight steps up from the sidewalk, as were many of the homes built in the 20’s. The shrubbery had been trimmed and some of the branches had been cut on an angle. Sure enough one of the sticks that were cut on an angle went in my left eye. I do remember overhearing some adults talking and saying that if the infection spreads, I could lose the vision in both eyes. I did lose all but 15% of the vision in my left eye. The big concern was the infection. I was lucky again. The infection didn’t spread. For the next 2 years I would have to wear an eye patch over my good eye to strengthen the bad one. With time and the wearing of the patch I regained about 80% of my vision. Glasses helped, but I hated to wear them.

When I was seven years old, I found myself living with my sister Pat and her husband Norm Schumacher. They owned a home in the Eight Mile Road area of Detroit. In fact, I still remember the address, 20150 Greeley St.

I had the occasion to be one of the actors in a neighborhood play. I can’t remember what the play was or anything about it. It took place in a neighbor’s garage. We had blankets for curtains and had fastened them on a board by placing a large milk can on the edge of the blanket. All went well until final curtain. As I was taking my bows, I held onto the curtain bringing the milk can down on my head. The twenty one stitches to sew up my head proved to be the beginning of my undoing.

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Being German

Before going into being German, I need to tell everyone a little bit about my three years with my sister, Pat, and her husband, Norm Schumacher. This was in the late thirties. It was from the time I was seven until I was nine years old. I had changed my name to Ralph Schumacher. 1940 Europe was at war but the United States had not yet entered the war. It was the time just prior to the start of WWII. Everyone knew the Germans were the bad guys and everyone thought I was German. Norm, who I thought of at the time as a step-father, was over six feet tall and weighed over 240 lbs.

Norm and Pat had two grown children of their own, a son who was gay and a daughter who had left home at age 15. Norm blamed Pat for having a gay son. According to Norm she coddled him and that made him gay. What did I know? I was 7 or 8 years old.

They were doing better than the rest of the family financially, and I believe that is why I was staying longer than my normal one year stint. I stayed in the basement, which sounds bad but really wasn’t. They had finished the walls by putting up some paneling and it was heated. Pat’s house was full of knick-knacks, religious artifacts and small ceramic figures. It was not a place for a boy to play. I was only allowed upstairs for meals and then only in the kitchen. More often than not, Norm and Pat would have a knock-down drag out fight, complete with knocking over of the table and making a total mess of the kitchen.

Very often my sister would dress me in short pants, even in the winter. She thought it made me look like a gentleman. Then I had to wear leggings on cold days over my short pants. Once I got to school, which was a very strict Catholic school, I would take off the leggings and spend the day in my short pants, or sissy pants. Between the short pants and the German name, it was a sure thing that I was going to get in a fight every day. As I recall, I think that I started most of the fights. When I came home, with my dirty and torn clothes from the scuffles I got into, it was Norm’s job to teach me a lesson. This lesson was administered with a belt on my bare backside.

There was one incident from which I still carry the scars. They had left me home alone with explicit instructions not to use the stove. When they came home, Norm asked me if I had been using the stove. I denied it but the burner was still on. He took my hand, folded my fingers under into a fist, and applied my knuckles to the hot burner. The treatment was butter administered by my sister.

I had devised a plan for survival. Whenever I started a new school, I found out who the toughest kid in the class was and would challenge him to a fight after school. Sometimes someone else would challenge me first. I would simply ask them if they were the toughest kid in the class, if not, they would have to wait their turn. When I did fight the toughest kid, I went into the fight knowing that I couldn’t lose. Yes, I could be beaten up, but so what? He could beat everyone else up in the class too. If I won, and I often did, no one else would challenge me.

Sometimes the decision wasn’t determined in one fight. I remember Eddie Sharrow; I can’t believe that I still remember his name. I know we fought every day for at least two weeks. I don’t remember who won, but he was a worthy opponent. Of course I knew what was awaiting me when Norm got home. It bothered him that I never cried. That was my sign of victory.

It was about this time that I started running away. Rather than facing the probability of a beating by Norm, I chose to take off. I remember one time that I lasted three nights in a friend’s dog house. With the dog! My friend would sneak some food out to me whenever he could. I actually only spent the evenings in the dog house. I would spend the days wandering around. I remember going door to door trying to get a job mowing lawns, or whatever they had for me to do. Usually someone would get suspicious and call the police. That’s the way I was caught. My friend was caught sneaking food out to me and had to tell his parents what he was doing.

Another time, I decided to go south, maybe Florida I was thinking, where it was warmer. I was hitch hiking and a trucker that had picked me up drove me right to the police station. I had made it as far as Toledo, Ohio.

On that particular occasion, I refused to tell them who I was. As I recall, I may have told them my first name. My name is Ralph and I wouldn’t give them any other information such as my address or anything else. Just my name is Ralph. They put me in a detention home until they could decide just what to do with me. That’s what we call juvenile hall nowadays. It must have been a minimum security facility because I did escape from there with five other kids. We were caught the next day.

I remember a police officer telling Pat, You have to find some way of controlling your kid. If you don’t, he’s going to set a record for the most runaways for St. Clair County. As I look back now, I never once gave a thought to what I was putting my sister through. I actually didn’t know she was my sister at the time. She was Mama Pat to me.

What brought the whole thing to a head (literally) was an incident after the milk can had fallen on my head. My sister had me enrolled in a Catholic school in Detroit. As I had stated before, I was not a good student. Far from it. I was a constant disruption. I don’t remember what I was doing this particular day to get the attention of the nun, but she grabbed me by the hair. When she gave it a yank, it broke loose some of the stitches that had been placed there from the milk can incident. The blood came down my face and I’m sure the nun was more scared than I was.

Into the office I went. The nurse was called. What happened? they asked. I proceeded to tell them about my accident that happened a week or so before. We’ll have to call your mother, the nun said. What’s your mother’s name, she asks? Which one I replied. Your mother, you only have one mother, she said. No I don’t. I have three. Mama Pat, Mama Irene and Mama Bea. About this time Pat arrived. I’ve got to get him to the doctor right away, she said. We left. I don’t think we went back to that school.

Within a few days, my sister Bea had swept me away to become Ralph Beauty. Beatrice was a waitress, as were most of my sisters, except Pat. Pat owned her own beauty parlor. Bea was the only person in the family who could talk to everyone else in the family. Irene and Pat wouldn’t talk to any of the Fernandezes, and none of them would talk to Pat and Irene. I think it may have been the fact that Bea was not as pretty as the other sisters, and she had so little that none of the siblings were envious or jealous of her. She was the peacemaker and they all accepted that fact.

A story that I wasn’t aware of until about twenty years ago was that my sister Josephine, the one that I thought was the oldest of the Fernandez clan, was not really a Fernandez. Although that’s the name she went by until she was married. When my real mother Mary was getting a divorce from Tomas Fernandez, she realized that she would be losing the children to him. Remember Mary, my real mother, had been charged with bootlegging. Mary thought that if Josephine, who was about ten years old, went with the three younger children (not including me) they would have someone to take care of Freddie, who was about seven years old, Dolores five, and Harold who was only three years old. She agreed and went with Tomas. There was a lot of resentment because the older sisters Pat and Irene had testified against Tomas in the divorce saying that he had beaten Mary. They were also out on their own by this time.

Beatrice by this time had a daughter, Shirley, who is two years younger than me. At that time we lived above a bar in a not so nice area of Detroit. Shirley was as much of a problem as I was. Bea was kind and loving and by far the poorest of the poor sisters. Trying to raise two kids on a waitress’s salary in 1939 was hard. But these were hard times for everybody. My stay with Bea was short. She explained to me that it wasn’t because she didn’t love me. She did, but she felt that I would be better off with the Fernandezes.

Fernandez Years

Packing up I remember being quite excited, partly because I was going to be living on a farm and partly because I was going to be living with my half brothers and sisters. I was becoming Ralph Fernandez.

By the time I went to live on the Fernandez farm, Josephine and Grace had graduated from high school and were out on their own. My brother Fred was a senior and a big man on campus at Algonac High School. He was called Ferdinand the Bull. He was about 5’8", if that, and weighed over 200 lb. From the stories I heard, he couldn’t be stopped. Football was his best sport but I guess he was a pretty good baseball player too.

Harold was two and half years younger than Fred and four year older than me. He was called Ferdinand Jr. He went out for sports but never reached the popularity that Fred did. This was a good change for me and it got me away from the rough area of Detroit.

Algonac is a small town about 60 miles above Detroit. It was on the St. Clair River and had canals in an area near the river. It was a beautiful little town where everybody knew everybody. The funny thing, as I look back on it is, I don’t remember seeing anyone in boats. The only ships that I remember were the Ore boats and a few row boats. It may have been because of the shortages of gas or recovering from the Great Depression.

I do remember plenty of good fishing spots and plenty of places to go swimming. I was able to swim underwater for quite a while before I had learned how to swim above the water. One of the things I used to like to do was to swim across the canals. I would run as fast as I could and do a head first dive as far out into the canal as I could. Then I would swim underwater as far as I could, come up for air, then go back down again to reach the other side. Luckily, the lack of supervision didn’t backfire.

One time I did almost drown, it was one spring when the water was high. I had borrowed a pair of my brother Harold’s boots. They were two sizes too big and came to my knees. This day Harold was with me. He was complaining about my