I recently found this picture of the SS Lavaca, one of the Victory ships my Dad served on as a Navy 'Armed Guard' during the war. Not a sleek Battleship or a "sexy" Aircraft carrier, but the real work horses of WWII, carrying Invasion Troops & equipment to the Pacific and Atlantic war fronts both. In my garage is a 4' long wooden replica of these ships in painstaking detail which he built years ago, while recovering from a surgery. I recently found a website where you can post messages and look for any living shipmates, but so far no luck. I should have started the search 15 or 20 years ago, as they are now leaving us at a rate of 1200 per day, a fact which depresses me greatly.
Dogdaddy,
aka Jim Nelson, Proud son of George M. Nelson, USN 1944-1946