Bode Go Fast, be Good, Have Fun

Chapter 1 1 Tamarack November 10, 1946 Won $22 on the horses last night (my first win since 1938). Good thing, too. Peg and I were down to $14. Won $3 playing cards. Not bad for an hour's work. from my grandfather's journal M y grandparents met on skis, which in itself isn't so strange. But I often think about the bit of luck that paired Jack Kenney with Peg Taylor for his first ski lesson on the slopes at Sugar Bowl, California, in the late fall of 1944, and then for life. She was his instructor, and a lesson was what he needed. He was a naval officer on leave from the war in the Pacific; she'd just graduated from UC Berkeley and was the fastest member of the women's U.S. Ski Team. When she could stay up, that is. She knew going fast had serious consequences, such as falling and crashing, and she could live with that. He'd traveled up from Hunters Point, where his ship, the USS Belleau Wood, had put into port. Peg was a ski racer enjoying life as much as anyone could in the midst of a world war. She wasn't looking for anything or anyone in particular; she was just taking it slow, planning on nothing but skiing, and finding what little fun she could otherwise. Jack, on the other hand, was desperate for a ski lesson. He had to learn to ski, because after the war, should he survive, he was going back to New England to open a ski lodge. In his mind, there was no greater calling than running a ski lodgealthough he'd barely ever been to one and couldn't ski to save his life. Nonetheless, this was the course he'd charted. It's hard to say what put this precise vision in Jack's mindone too many Bing Crosby movies aboard ship, maybe. But when it was over over there, Jack Kenney would be a ski lodge innkeeper, and there was no talking him out of it. Jack was in a hurry that day on the sunny slopes of Sugar Bowl because his shore leave would be short-lived, lasting only until his air wing was reassigned to another flattop and sent back to the Pacific to fight the Imperial Japanese Navy. A few weeks earlier, the Belleau Wood had been on patrol with the USS Franklin in the Visayan Sea, a small body of water that loops in and around the Philippine Islands. They were doing their jobs, searching the skies for Betties and Zekes, and splashing as many as they could. The world was at war, and Jack was a warrior. If you knew him, that fact alone would underscore the seriousness of those times. On the morning of October 30, 1944, off the coast of Cebu, three Japanese bombers broke through the cloud cover in pursuit of the Franklin. From the flight deck of his ship, Jack watched the Franklin's antiaircraft guns pop the first bomber out of the sky; it went down off the starboard side. The second came fast out of the sun and crashed onto the deck, killing fifty-six and wounding sixty. The third plane dropped a bomb on the Franklin, caught a shell from the Belleau Wood, and then dived, suicide style, onto the flight deck of my grandfather's ship. It exploded into a rolling fireball, sliding into rows of planes on the deck, exploding their bombs and fuel, and sending black smoke and billowing red flames high into the air; it burned through the night. Ninety-two of Jack's shipmates died that day: burned alive, drowned, or both. Many were never found. The survivors worked day and night in enemy waters to extinguish the fires and keep the ship afloat. Its major systemselectricity, navigation, everythingwere damaged by the attack. Charred corpses lined what was left of the deck. Jack had to have been deeply affeMiller, Bode is the author of 'Bode Go Fast, be Good, Have Fun', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400062355 and ISBN 1400062357.