I turned 16 Years old on October 12, 1941, 55 days later Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7 and Japan sunk about 75% of the United States fleet and many civilians and service men lost their lives in the bombing and strafing from the planes. That was on a Sunday and the next night around 7 o’clock, we and the whole country turned on the radio to hear our president Franklin Delano Roosevelt tell us what happened, I only remember one sentence of his speech which was, we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.
My Uncle Art and Aunt Lillian left in a few months for Utica, N.Y. to work in the Savage Arms Factory making rifles for the armed services. I moved next door across the field to my grandfather and grandmother’s house.
When I turned 17, I left school and joined them and went to work at Rome Air Force Base which is about 30 miles west of Utica. I started working on an assembly line as an aircraft engine mechanic learner. The building called a depot had about 500 employees all over the building performing different procedures on returned Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Engines that were used in B-17 Bombers. The engines had to be unloaded and dismantled piece by piece and all new parts installed to replace the damaged ones. (These engines were shipped to the U.S. from London after receiving shrapnel from Ant-Aircraft shrapnel from German ground forces that might damage some of the engine but not all of it). Our job on our line was to install a new crankshaft which had threads on the shaft which I attached to a device screwing it on the shaft and placing a large steel hook into the top of the device and pulling on a steel chain to lift the crankshaft off the bench and pull it on a ceiling rail over to a large machine filled with 500 degree oil heat to shrink the bearing on the bottom of the crankcase, the shaft stayed in the oil while we got another one ready to send to the oil bin. We received the original back to the workbench and proceeded to install new tappets and wire them with copper wire and then using a wrench that measured the exact pounds of pressure needed, we then attached the shaft and the bearing to the base of the engine and sent it off to another bench for further modification, our procedure took about 1 hour for the above job.
I worked for 3 years for the Air Force on different parts of the engines (they came in on a weekly basis and I really enjoyed the work.) I was given a review every 3 months and a new pay grade, the pay grade was based on performance of work, and I believe I left as an Aircraft First Class Engine Mechanic. The papers are still in a safe that Uncle Art bought in 1941 and the safe is in your Aunt Carolyn’s closet, I have not seen them in years.
I went back home to Saranac Lake when the war was over in 1945 Uncle Art and I bought a cigarette vending machine business with about 50 machines in different locations, restaurants, hotels, etc. We kept that going for about 2 years. Uncle Art worked for Gulf Oil Corporation and I took care of the business. After a couples years of running that we sold the business for a profit and I went into business with my two brothers, Donald, and Ray running our own taxi company. I purchased a new 1941 Chrysler and owned a third of the partnership. We had an office on Broadway in Saranac Lake, and had a pretty lucrative business, since there was only 1 other taxi business at the time. Unfortunately, a lot of our customers lived at the local tuberculosis facility about 5 miles out of town, and in the cold winter time I had to keep the car windows closed, which put me in contact with their germs when they coughed, so I came down with pneumonia and the doctor put me in the hospital at the sanitarium and told me I had TB and they gave me a week to live, but I survived and spent 2 years under medication and chest exams once a week, we had to sleep at night with our doors open out onto the porch so that the fresh air could come in, even in the winter time. I lost several friends while I was there. It was a wonderful day when the doctor told me that my condition was arrested, (that was the term they used), which meant I was healed.
After that I went to work for Gulf Oil Corp. in the office and an elderly lady named Ora Savage ran the posting machine and she helped me learn the routine of the office: it was just her and me and the owner’s daughter Kate and I really liked them both. One day Ora asked me if I went to church and I said no, she invited me to go with her to the Methodist church next Sunday and I told her okay. She introduced me to the minister and I liked him a lot, he was an elderly man but I guess at my age (around 25) anyone older than 50 was old, he invited me to stop by the parsonage next door to the church one evening after dinner so I did and he asked me if I was a Christian and I told him no, that was the first time I had ever been to a church service, so he proceeded to tell me what it meant to become one, and he read some words from the bible and taught me and encouraged me to accept the love of Jesus and become a Christian and I said yes I want to do that, then he took me into the large stone church and it was very dark at that time (around 8:00 PM) and a very cold night also, this was in November and freezing weather and he had a small candle holder for light, so we went down front to the altar and kneeled and he said a beautiful prayer, and I repeated after him the prayer of acceptance to my Lord Jesus and my heart was warmed. I will say that it was not like Paul’s experience on the Road to Damascus, but through the years, I have grown closer and closer to my Lord God. The name of that old preacher was Rev. Ted Bundy.
I worked at that office for about 3 years and I decided to drive to Florida and visit my brother, Roger and his wife Carmen, and 2 children, Valerie and Gary so I stayed a week and fell in love with Orlando, so I went back home and packed up my belongings and drove back to Florida in my 1951 Pontiac and arrived on July 4th 1952. I found a room and boarding house on Lake Ave Run by an elderly couple and soon found a job. My first was Green’s Fuel on Mills Ave. near the Florida Hospital where I worked in their service department for about 3 years. Then Holloway Materials Co. on Mills Ave. near Lee Rd. Where I met Betty’s brother, Cliff Cunningham and worked in the same office with him and he asked me if I would date his sister who was going to visit him and his wife and kids and I said sure. To make a long story short, I fell in love with her at first sight and we had dinner together and walked on the beach (Daytona), and had a wonderful week together. She left, and we wrote each other, (I sent flowers) and when she came down the next year, I asked her to marry me and she said yes. We were married on October 11, 1958 in Athens, Tennessee. We drove to Brooklyn, N.Y. and stayed for a few days with my brother Ray and his wife Mary and she drove us all over New York City and showed us all the sites and took us to dinner at a building called Radio City Music Hall and we had dinner on the very top floor and looking out over the city. Pretty cool. We then drove to Saranac Lake and stayed with my mother for a week.
I was working for Hubbard construction at the time, I went to work there February 1, 1962 and worked for Mr. Hubbard as paymaster for 29 years. I went through an accounting course after work at night for 2 years at Rollins College and the company sent me to Atlanta to learn some programming courses at IBM School, (they still use my program for determining eligible days of vacation and sick leave earned for employees).
Come this October 205, on the 11th your grandmother and I would celebrate 57 wonderful years of marriage, and on the 12th I moved into the towers 10 years ago and on the 13th I will be 90 years old, wow!!! I am blessed by our God, The Great I Am, Jehova.
And now, you know the rest of the story.
Love,
Dad/Papa
*Penned by Mr. Warren Seney May 25th, 2015
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