Coincidences

Have you ever discovered coincidences in your life?  77 years ago last Friday I was 12 years old and already a successful independent businessman. I ran a very small landscape organization and had two customers. One was Porter E. Stone who lived next door to our home in Detroit, Michigan.  Mrs. Feeney, a widow, lived just two doors down from us and she was my new customer. Each of them paid me twenty five cents a week to cut their lawn and do the trimming around and sweeping the sidewalk.  I had saved all of my earnings from two weeks and I arose early that Sunday Morning and went to mass at Gesu Church located across from the campus of The University of Detroit on McNichols Road.  I then returned home, ate a quick breakfast and walked down our street to the bus stop on the corner where I boarded the Second Avenue Bus for downtown Detroit. When we arrived downtown I got off the bus and walked about half a mile north on Woodward Avenue. Historically it was the first paved road in the city of Detroit.

I had truthfully told my mother that I was going downtown to hear a live big band.  What I did not tell her was that I was headed for The Paradise Theatre where the famous Duke Ellington Orchestra was being featured.  There I was, a twelve year old boy inside that crowded theatre and very nearly the only white person there.  It didn’t faze me a bit. Everyone was friendly.  I was cool.

After a short movie an excited voice announced, “And now, The Paradise Theatre is proud to introduce the great Duke Ellington Orchestra. The band began playing the Duke’s theme song “Take The A Train”.  I was absolutely thrilled.  That song had been written by a man named Billy Strahorn who sometimes played piano in the orchestra and who wrote arrangements for the band.

I was ecstatic.  The great Coleman Hawkins was featured on Tenor Saxophone, Johnny Hodges on Alto, Oscar Pettiford on Bass, Al Hibbler on vocals.  Those were just a few of the stars with the orchestra that I remember, plus the awesome Duke Ellington on Piano.

I had hoped to stay for a second show but when the movie ended the ushers cleared out all us young folks who were at the first show. A second crowd was waiting for those seats. I walked down Woodward Avenue and boarded the Second Avenue Bus and headed back home.  I got off the bus a couple of stops from my home.  I still had money in my pocket and decided to invest it in a couple of candy bars. I got off at Livernois Street and walked past the Varsity Theatre down to the little candy store next door.  I had my money in hand and the proprietor, a middle aged man, was sitting on his stool crying.  I asked him why and he informed me that he had been listening to music on his radio and they had cut into the program to announce that the Japanese had just attacked our American fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and many American sailors had been killed. Then he sighed and continued, “They said that we’d be going to war.”

I went home and listened to the news reports until late that night.  In his speech, President Roosevelt declared that December 7, 1941, the day that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, would remain “a date which will live in infamy.”  It sure did.

On August 6, 1945 an American B 29 Bomber dropped an Atom Bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. 80,000 Japanese were killed that day and thousands more died from exposure to radiation.  Nine days later the Japanese Emperor surrendered and World War ll ended.

In 1951 I was with the 1st Cavalry Division assigned as a Combat Rifleman in Korea and  was wounded while attacking a communist hill. I first went to Taegu General Hospital and then was flown to Kobe General Hospital in Japan for surgery. While I was convalescing the whole 1st Cav was pulled out of Korea and shipped to Sapporo, Japan in Hokkaido.  I was soon sent to the former Japanese Naval Academy at Eta Jima where General Yamamoto who had led the air attack on Pearl Harbor had graduated. I attended specialist classes for becoming an officer’s clerk. There I was just a quick boat ride from Eta Jima to the city of Hiroshima where that atom bomb had been dropped so I visited the Memorial Site where the bomb had landed.

In the eighties I had become a professional public speaker and one of my specialties was in the field of safety. Then in the nineties the United States Navy booked me to fly from Michigan to speak to the crew of a Nuclear Ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. While there I visited the Battle Ship Missouri at the Memorial Site where the Japanese naval attack took place.

In Detroit in 1954 I married Ruth who died in 1993. In 1998 I was a featured speaker at the National Safety Congress in Los Angeles and a fellow visited my booth and asked if I could consider traveling to Australia to give a series of speeches in that country. I knew nothing about Australia so I went to my computer and looked up “Australia, Travel.” Somehow up popped a travel agent in Hillsborough, NC.  After corresponding with her online about travel and other matters I moved to Hillsborough and we married in 2001.  The  plaque on Churton Street here in town announcing that Billy Strayhorn grew up in Hillsborough, became a songwriter and arranger with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and wrote that song, “Take the A Train”…takes me back to December 7, 1941 when they opened the curtain at the Paradise Theater in Detroit, Michigan and a thrilled 12 year old boy, and to the man crying in the candy store.  What coincidences have you discovered in your life?