No Regrets

By Nicolas Lopez

I am 82 years old I got as far as the 8th grade in school My mom always
said I was not very smart but I was very bright so that was why she
called me Sunny. At age 15 and 6 months old going on 16 I became a
merchant seaman in 1945 at age 18 I Joined the US Army on 9/15 /1948
For one year that turned in to 20 years 10 months and 6 days. I got my
GED while I was in the army at age 26. I retired on 8/4/1969 from the
Army. My Citation are: Combat Infantry badge with one star, for two
wars. Korea & Vietnam unit citation, Korean president unit citation,
good conduct with 5 oak leaf clusters, Distinguished unit citation, I
served in Europe with the Army transport Service in 1945 In Korea
1950 to 1951 and 3 tours in Vietnam 1966 to 1969 I went to UH Hilo
1975 to 77 I then went back to sea with the US Navy sea lift command
as Lt. JG from 1981 to 1991

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477120675

Nicolas Lopez

TO FOLLOW

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Nicolas Lopez.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012909711

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4771-2066-8

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4771-2065-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4771-2067-5

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It was on November 12, 1929, 3:15 a.m. I made my way into this world—all 2 1/4 pounds of me—at St. Mary’s Help Hospital in San Francisco, California. My twin did not make it. My dad was twenty-five years old and my mom was twenty-two years old when I was born. My dad was a merchant mariner when he was seventeen years old.

Picture01.jpg

My dad is second from the right.

He met Mom in Kauai, Hawaii, in 1924 at the age of twenty and Mom was only seventeen years old. They decided to get married just before her eighteenth birthday in 1925. There were no jobs to be had in Hawaii; and while he was sailing, he fell in love with San Francisco, California. But he did not want to live in Hawaii (he was born in Kohala, Big Island, Hawaii, on May 17 1904). Dad and Mom and Mom’s whole family made their move to San Francisco, California, in 1926. All went well for the first three years then, even with the Depression just around the corner. My dad was working for the Chesterfield Cigarette Company in San Francisco, California. He was with the company for four years when my mother and the rest of the family wanted to go back home to Hawaii. Dad was all for it at the time.

Dad had a good job, even with the oncoming Depression, and my dad knew this for he was a smoker himself. Every one needed their cigarettes. He and my mother did talk it over and decided that she would take my sister Jennie, aged two years and four months; my brother Moran, aged one year and two months; me, aged one month old; and the rest of the family. These included my granddad and grandma who were Mother’s dad and mom; my aunt Mary, my mother sister; her son Louis, who was eight years old at the time; her husband, my uncle Nolo (Manuel); and also my uncle Manuel, my mother’s brother who was seventeen years old at the time. My dad would pay for all their tickets back to Hawaii and follow her in two months or so. So the family left San Francisco, California, on the USS Mariposa on December of 1929 for Honolulu, Hawaii. It took about ten days to sail to Hawaii from San Francisco, California, in those days. When we got there, Mom said we were living in a place called Water Town. I’m sure it was right next to John Rogers Airport, which is Honolulu International Airport as I look at it today, and in between where Hickman Airbase is today (there was no Hickman Airbase then as it was known as the army air force; the airbase was at Wilier Field next to Schofield Barracks).

My dad was sending money to my mom to for the first years and a half, and that was it. Noting after that.

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My mom and sister Jennie, brother Moran, and me at Iolani Park in Honolulu.

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My uncle Manuel with us kids.

I was about one and a half years old. It was about March 1931 when my dad sent a letter to my mom through a seaman family friend, saying that he was not coming back to Hawaii and that he wanted a divorce. She wrote back and told him, No, no way. Well, my dad never did go back to Hawaii and did have a son with his common-law wife. My brother Mario was born in 1932. He then left her in 1941 after nine years and met his second common-law wife in 1942 and had two children: my brother Dannie, born in 1943, and my sister Doreen, born in 1948. In 1945 he had an affair with his first ex-common-law wife and had my sister Sandra born on November 25, 1946, whom I have never met till my later adult years. And she became very close to me and my brother Moran to this day. Yes, you can say my dad was a playboy.

We were at that time getting ready to move to a place called Palolo Valley. My mom did get herself a boyfriend in 1931 right after she got the note from my dad. His name was Warren Nathaniel Potter, and before you can say jack rabbit, my brother Hubert E. Potter Lopez was born on May 9, 1932. Not long after that, along came my brother Leroy Potter Lopez on February 25, 1934. When she gave birth to my brothers, who were born at home and was delivered by a midwife who was my grandmother (my mother’s mother), my brothers were given my dad’s last name Lopez since they were still married. The middle name Potter was my stepdad’s.

My mom was four feet and nine inches tall and eighty-three pounds. No one came Be for her children. She had a saying "If you don’t like my apples, don’t shake my tree. There was only one thing wrong with my stepdad Warren Nathaniel Potter. He never told my mom that he was going back to North Carolina, USA; and since he was in the U.S. Army and was getting out of the army, he never said he was coming back to Hawaii. There is nothing I can say bad about my stepdad Potter. He was good to my mom and to us kids.

Now there were five of us kids and my brother Leroy was about two months old when