Service

Art Price, circa 1946.

Filling in with some background information during a letter-writing hiatus from October 6 to November 9, 1949, as June recuperates at the hospital from a ruptured appendix…

High school classes were very fluid during World War II, with the boys frequently disappearing before graduation as they either enlisted or were drafted.  While still in high school, Art attempted to enlist in the Air Force but was rejected because he had had rheumatic fever in his youth.  Following this, he waited to be drafted, graduating on schedule in 1944.

Shortly following graduation, Art was drafted into the Navy.  Performing well on the tests, he was placed into special training to be a quartermaster, the petty officer in charge of day-to-day navigation tasks.  The war ended the week he shipped out, but his appointed work on a minesweeper is just as important (and dangerous) in the time immediately following a war as during.  Unexploded mines pay no heed to treaties.  During his two years of service, Art worked as a quartermaster third class on several small minesweepers in the Pacific Ocean.

From his early teenage years, Art had diligently worked on his art skills, frequently making detailed copies of drawings and photographs in Time magazine.  He took his sketchpad along with him while serving in the Pacific.  At the age of 19, he found himself stationed in Shanghai and the Philippines, drawing the exotic sights and poverty that he saw around him, so different from anything he had ever seen in the Hamptons.

YMS6, one of the Yard Minesweepers
that Art served on.



Art's sketch of the
minesweeper YMS6.













(Tomorrow, a gallery of drawings from Art’s service in the Navy…)

Countdown:  Correspondence resumes in 15 days.

© 2010 Lee Price