The Joy of Living on Planet Earth

By Xlibris US

The Joy of living on Planet Earth traces the life of Edward C. Woerz. Born in 1924, Edward spent his formative years in Hollywood, California. Raised in a hardworking family, Edward lost his little sister at an early age and his father a shortly thereafter. Coupled with the perils of the Great Depression, these tragedies thrust him into a life dependent on government assistance. After surviving World War II, Edward came home and worked his way through medical school at the University of Southern California, attained great affluence and raised a wonderful family. His life was one that truly exemplified the American Dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781524560355

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Edward C. Woerz, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2016919156

ISBN:             Hardcover            978-1-5245-6037-9

                 Softcover            978-1-5245-6036-2

                 eBook                 978-1-5245-6035-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/19/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

748459

Contents

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1: THE EARLY YEARS

CHAPTER 2: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

CHAPTER 3: JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER 4: HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER 5: THE NAVY

CHAPTER 6: WORLD WAR II … U.S.S. PENNSYLVANIA (BB-38) FLAGSHIP OF THE 7TH FLEET.

CHAPTER 7: USS CALLAGHAN (DD-792)

CHAPTER 8: USS DONALDSON (DE-44)

CHAPTER 9: TYPHOON COBRA

CHAPTER 10: COMING HOME

CHAPTER 11: THE TROJANS – MEDICAL SCHOOL (1953-1957) AND BEYOND

CHAPTER 12: LA BUENA VIDA (THE GOOD LIFE)

PARTIAL NAVAL HULL DESIGNATIONS AND NOMENCLATURE

APPENDIX

TO MY WIFE AND FAMILY,

TO MY COUNTRY,

AND

TO MY SHIPMATES EVERYWHERE.

FROM THE HOLY BIBLE (ACTS NINE)

SAUL OF TARSUS (WHO LOVED KILLING CHRISTIANS); WHILE ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS WAS MET BY THE POST-RESURRECTED JESUS AND CONVERTED TO THE APOSTLE PAUL, WHO THEN WRITES OVER FIFTY-PERCENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT NARRATION.

THIS HAS BEEN PROVEN BY MODERN HISTORIANS.

FOREWORD

The Joy of Living on Planet Earth is my story; from my birth in the heart of the Roaring Twenties, to the present.

It is the tale of a boy born of working class means who was plunged into the humblest of circumstances by tragedy; the death of my younger sister and my father. Along with another little sister I was reared by a single mother and a beloved aunt and uncle, in a tiny court apartment, in the heart of Hollywood, CA.

My adventures with my boyhood pals and gals (a group that remained my best friends for our entire lives of which ten are alive at this writing) on the streets and parks and back movie lots in tinsel town’s Golden Age, mixed the perils and poverty of the Great Depression are those of a 20th century Tom Sawyer.

When I came of age, my life was interrupted by the greatest calamity in world history; World War Two. Answering the call, my friends and I stepped forward to serve. My time aboard three war ships in the Pacific Theater exposed me to danger and violence on a scale that defies imagination. And my survival, that included nearly drowning in the deadliest typhoon of the war and the first storm to be given a name can only be attributed to divine intervention.

After the war I came home and took advantage of a victorious country teeming with opportunity. In the ensuing decades, I married, completed medical school at the University of Southern California, helped raise a family and became a renowned General Surgeon. Along the way, I was able to put my children through college, travel the world, and, after an illustrious career, retire.

I am proud of my journey; it is quintessentially American. I hope all of you enjoy it!

Dr. Edward C. Woerz, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Long Beach, CA

Resume of Dr. Edward C. Woerz, M.D., F.A.C.S.

EDWARD C.WOERZ, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery

1777 Bellflower Blvd.

Long Beach, CA 90815

MEDICAL EDUCATION:

General Surgery Residency

PRACTICE:

GENERAL SURGERY (Full Privileges)

Procedures: 1. Jejunoileal Intestinal Bypass, 10-4 followed by 2. Gastric Bypass Variations.

My USC professor J. Howard Payne was the 1st Bariatric Surgeon in the 50’s and 60’s and coined the term morbid obesity and I was supposedly the 2nd bariatric surgeon on planet earth.

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS:

Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery, (Certificate #14136, 5/26/66)

Fellow American College of Surgeons

Instructor, Advanced Trauma Life Support, (ATLS) - UCLA & Memorial Hospital Long Beach

Re-certified/Examination, 1989-1993, (Amer. College Surgeons)

American Society for Bariatric Surgery of Obesity, (Regular Member)

American College of Surgeons

International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity, (Regular Member)

Long Beach Surgical Society

LACMA, CMA, AMA

Member, Professional Liability Committee, (American Society of Bariatric Surgery)

Member, Public/Professional Educational Committee on Public Relations

Member, Alpha Epsilon Delta-Premed Honor Society, USC, 1953.

PUBLICATIONS:

Rationale for the Surgical Treatment of Severe Obesity, Obesity Surgery; 3:430-433, 1993.

Licenses:

California A18198

DEA No. AW1418804

247_a_a.jpg

Woerz Coat of Arms

001_a_a.jpg

History of Woerz name

001_b_a.jpgFinal%20Dr.jpg002_a_a.jpg

Eddie & Bertha June Woerz around 1926 at their home at 2232 Maple Ave. Los Angeles, CA.

CHAPTER ONE

THE EARLY YEARS

***

At 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918, a sudden silence fell across the blood-soaked battlefields of Europe and the sun-scorched deserts of the Middle East. It was the sound of peace. WWI was mercifully over, and all of mankind heaved a sigh of relief.

The decade that followed, dubbed the Roaring ’20s, was a raucous time in America. The economy boomed, jobs were plentiful, and prosperity reigned.

Jazz became the rage. Flappers bobbed their hair, hiked up their hemlines, and gamboled to a sassy dance called the Charleston.

Organized crime thrived in the ’20s, thanks to the passage of the Volstead Act. The resultant Prohibition handed an entire industry into the clutches of the underworld.

In technology, advances like automobiles, telephones, radios, electricity, and refrigeration eased life for millions of Americans.

On the fields of play, men like Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and Red Grange were bigger than life.

And in sunny Hollywood, motion pictures rose to the apex of entertainment when a former vaudevillian named Al Jolson starred in the Jazz Singer and told the world in the first talkie, You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

***

I was born in the middle of all this, on Sunday, May 25, 1924, in our family home at 2237 Maple Avenue in Los Angeles, California, not far from Exhibition Park and my favorite (and future) school, USC.

In those years, doctors made house calls and being born at home was common. A little more than two years later, my sister, Bertha June, was born at home, and in 1930, so was my second sister, Emily Louise.

I don’t recall Bertha June’s arrival, but when Emily Louise came along, I remember hearing her crying and thought it was my mother. Seeing my distress, my dad sent me to the corner store to buy some candy to get away from it all.

My father’s name was Emil Christ Woerz. He was born in Chicago in 1890 of German descent. His father was one of the three Woerz brothers who emigrated from Wittenburg in southeast Germany. One of them settled in New York and became rich and famous as a master brewer, while the other two settled in Chicago where one became a brewer and the other a cabinet maker.

005_b_a.jpg

Mom holding me as a baby.

005_a_a.jpg

My mother’s family. Mom is the infant and her sister Bertha is the girl behind her on the right.

007_b_a.jpg

My grandfather, one of three brothers who came to America and became brewers.

007_a_a.jpg

My dad in WWI uniform taken in studio …

008_b_a.jpg

… in uniform at home.

008_a_a.jpg

Dad was trained as an aircraft mechanic. Here he examines what appears to be a plane part.

010_c_a.jpg

Dad standing beside a crashed aero plane in 1918.

010_b_a.jpg

Dad’s army footlocker. Still in mint condition.

010_a_a.jpg

My father’s business card.

My mother’s maiden name was Alta Gossett. She was of French lineage and was born in the small town of Mayfield in Southwest Kentucky in 1905.

Mayfield is named after a kidnapped gambler who carved his name in a tree hoping someone would find him. He drowned trying to escape across Mayfield Creek. The town took its name from the creek or maybe the gambler; nobody knows for sure. But I like the gambler story better.

Mother came to California as a little girl with her family and her elder sister, my aunt Bertha. Her mother (my grandmother) suffered from tuberculosis, and California was a healthier climate. Aunt Bertha was a wonderful lady who later married my uncle, Claude Housman, an equally wonderful man also from Kentucky. Uncle Claude worked at the main post office in Downtown Los Angeles. At one time, he was nominated for the superintendent of mail and, to the best of my knowledge, he may of held that position. I remember working at the post office for a while after WWII (at his request), and it was the dullest experience of my life.)

Our house on Maple Avenue was one of the two structures on the property. Our home was in the front, while in the back was a large garage that contained my dad’s auto repair shop. Dad had served with the 235th Aero Squadron in WWI as an airplane mechanic. When he was discharged, he opened his own business.

014_b_a.jpg

Bertha June and I in our backyard. Note the sign for Dad’s business.

014_a_a.jpg

The four of us in front of the family automobile.

016_b_a.jpg

Aunt Bertha with us in front of the family automobile.

016_a_a.jpg

I learned to ride early. Taken in front of my home at 2237 Maple Ave. Los Angeles, CA.

018_b_a.jpg

… and to drive

018_a_a.jpg

Bigger boy, bigger car.

019_a_a.jpg

My surrogate parents, Aunt Bertha and uncle Claude Housman. They were a stylish and classy couple. They owned the 4 unit apartment at 4619 Maubert Ave. Hollywood, CA.

My little sister and I spent a lot of our time in the backyard playing. We had our own chicken coop and rabbit hutch. One time, when I was about four years old, I had a big jar of water and five baby chicks. I figured the chicks needed a bath and stuffed them into the jar. Unfortunately, they all drowned. I remember my dad being very upset at my live and learn experience.

One of the early and very tragic events of my life took place when I was four and one half years old. My little sister Bertha June and I were playing in the sandbox my dad had built for us in the backyard. She was just a toddler.

Dad and another man (who was driving) were backing the other man’s automobile into the driveway and turning toward the garage in the backyard. They had the window up and couldn’t hear anything. Dad was in the passenger seat, and the other man was driving. Seeing her daddy, little Bertha started running after them, screaming her lungs out.

The area wasn’t paved, and there were deep tire ruts in the ground. She tripped and fell in one of those ruts and was accidently run over. They took her to the hospital, but her lungs were crushed, and she died.

It was a terrible event, and I can still see it. Little Bertha June was buried at Highland Park Cemetery in Highland, CA next to my father. I was so young that I didn’t have a sense of the deep trauma Mom and Dad had suffered. But in retrospect, I know they were completely devastated.

021_a_a.JPG

We buried Bertha June at Highland Park Cemetery.

022_a_a.jpg

Mom, myself and sister Emily in front of aunt and uncles apartment at 4619 Maubert Ave. Hollywood, CA

CHAPTER TWO

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

024_a_a.jpg

My aunt and uncle’s apartment building at 4619 Maubert Ave. Hollywood, CA. My aunt and uncle lived in the apartment at far left. After the war I lived in the apartment at far right and my mother and sister lived in the upper left apartment.

***

A few years after my sister died, I started school at San Pedro Elementary in the first grade. I skipped kindergarten because my mother feared I’d get picked on.

My clearest memory of that first year is of a group of us sitting around a table playing with crayons. Like kids will do, we were sticking them up our nose. Mine got stuck, and