My son was 4 when my father died, so I don’t have many photos of the two of them together. I think this might be the only one where I am in the shot with them.
Smitty, Smitty, and Smitty.
This photo above was taken: about 35 years after my Chief Petty Officer father retired from the US Navy where he served as a Hospital Corpsman; and roughly, 18 years before my son completed his Hospital Corpsman training (as I predicted my son would be given at least two nicknames during the career: “Smitty” and “Doc.”
Both of them completed field medicine training at Camp Pendleton and became fond of San Diego (“It’s too damn cold there!” my father would say most other places in on the planet).
In between those milestones, I was born—in the same base where father had undergone his Corpsman training during World War II.
I’m glad the two of them got to hang out a few times, both seemed to have fun. Though I doubt that my father would have approved of the young ‘un wearing a Yankees hat on a trip to Boston.