Dad

Beckett Gladney

I rediscovered this and a few other photos today. My dad, photo taken by me about 15 years ago.

Jim Gladney went into the navy when he was 17; he lied about his age. He was stationed on the USS Kitkun Bay in the Pacific and went through the battle for Leyte Gulf among other actions.

He never talked about it when I was a kid; it was only much later after I got to know him as an adult, after he was diagnosed with cancer, that he talked about it a bit. He hated fireworks, having lived through the real things. He specifically asked not to be cremated since he'd lived through several kamikaze attacks and saw his best friend on the ship incinerated in front of him. At some point in combat he was swept overboard and ended up in the water overnight, using his wet pants to make makeshift floats. The other men who were swept overboard with him were not found; he ended up losing a rib and part of a lung to surgery for pneumonia.

He spent most of the rest of his life in a great deal of physical pain, frequently angry and hard to get along with. My belief is that his life did not go the way he had hoped partly because he never really recovered from his experiences during the war.

He passed away about six years ago now, and I still miss him.

---

View Project: