Drive-In

Wanting to watch Harry Potter 7 part 2 after a marathon with some family, we gladly accepted the invitation our cousins to go to the drive-in and see a double feature with their family.

She had pajamas and everything prepared for her kids.

 Holding my cousin's precious baby

Calvin Hooper, WWII Marine cont.

Great-Uncle LaRoy enlightened me with more details about my grandpa, his brother.  Calvin Muir Hooper served as a machinist on the USS Cape Gloucester CVE-109)
    

http://www.navsource.org/archives/03/109.htm      The USS Cape Gloucester seen from various angles.  At port in Pearl Harbor.

As a marine with knowledge of machinery, Grandpa served on a naval escort carrier.  They were developed originally by the British to give antisubmarine aircraft places to land.  The USS Cape Gloucester was a Commencement Bay class, sent to the Pacific.


"The Commencement Bays were completed in 1944-45 as the final class of escort carriers. They were a development of the Sangamons, and inherited many of their characteristics, but were built as carriers from the keel up. They had less range, but much better machinery layout and subdivision. Many warship experts regard them as the best of the escort carriers. Only a few units were completed in time to see combat and none were lost in the Pacific."

(http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/C/o/Commencement_Bay_class.htm)


It sounds as though they weren't the most enjoyable ships, as the crewmen joked that "the type designation (CVE) stood for 'Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable.' They were cramped and uncomfortable, and flight operations were always hairy. Nevertheless, the ships were a success."
(http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/E/s/Escort_Carriers.htm)

Calvin Muir Hooper

Enhanced with Photoshop

The ship as a whole was awarded a battle star at the end of World War II.

After operational training at Pearl Harbor, Cape Gloucester arrived at Leyte, P.I. on 29 June 1945 to join the 3rd Fleet. Her planes flew combat air patrolfighting off Japanese kamikazes attempting to attack minesweepers operating east of Okinawa from 5–17 July. They then took part in air raids and photographic reconnaissance of shipping and airfields along the China coast until 7 August. During this time, her aircraft shot down several Japanese planes, and aided in damaging a 700-ton cargo ship. After a period covering minesweeping along the Japanese coasts, and just two weeks after the Japanese formally surrendered on board the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2, 1945, the Cape Gloucester sailed into Nagasaki, stripped of her planes, to serve as an early participant in the celebrated “Magic Carpet” fleet that returned thousands of ragged and half-starved prisoners of war from Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Holland, together with a handful of Americans, to their homes. Many of these POWs were from prison camps on Kyūshū. In that role, Cape Gloucester sailed to Okinawa to unload the allied POWs, and made four voyages returning U.S. servicemen from Okinawa and Pearl Harbor to the west coast. The escort carrier returned to Tacoma, Wash., 22 May 1946, and was placed out of commission in reserve there on 5 November 1946. Still in reserve, she was reclassified CVHE-109 on 12 June 1955, and further reclassified AKV-9 on 7 May 1959. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cape_Gloucester_(CVE-109)

http://www.japanfocus.org/site/view/1627

CVE-109 GENERAL SPECIFICATIONS

Class: Commencement Bay-class escort carrier

Complement: 1066 Officers and Enlisted

Displacement: 10900 tons

Length: 557 feet

Beam: 75 feet

Draft: 32 feet

Final Disposition: Sold and scrapped (1971)

http://www.hullnumber.com/CVE-109


If I'd been in Grandpa's place, I'm sure I'd have been jumping each time one of the pilots knocked a kamikaze out of the sky.  I just wonder how his emotions shifted when they reached Nagasaki, seeing the damage and the prison camp POWs.

I'm proud of my grandpa, Calvin Muir Hooper, who served as a marine during World War II.  The men in the POW camps survived so much, such as starvation, extreme work and exercise, and seeing friends and soldiers tortured and killed.  I'm grateful for all of the heroic efforts of the members of the military serving aboard the U.S.S. Cape Gloucester.

Mischief in Beaver

At Dad's Uncle Donald's house, I spoke with Grandpa's and Donald's other brother, LaRoy.

Grandpa Calvin M. Hooper in his youth

He said Calvin, my Grandpa, had been a talented track racer.  His best was the 500 m race.  He and LaRoy used to play around with the mine carts in Beaver.  Calvin would put his little brother in the cart and race it to the end, where the carts would dump their contents.  One time Calvin and one of his brothers played with a rope that caught fire, and dropped the burning end into an air shaft connected to the mines.  The boys ran away, and the miners evacuated, with no casualties.  People assumed someone had thrown a cigarette into the shaft, and their Mom, Jeanette, was appalled when she found out years later it was her boys' doing.

Abandoned mine in nearby murder-filled ghost town, Frisco, former murder capital

https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Frisco,_Utah

Grandpa worked with tools all of his life.  LaRoy explained some of Calvin's ideas.  When Dad found out his father had tried to build a glider plane as a young man, to fly off of the dump, but was never successful, Dad proclaimed, "I'm glad he didn't, or I might not be here."

 I'd been confused about my great-grandpa's name, because on some records it says "Morise LeRoy" and others "Morise LaRoy."  LaRoy explained that his dad's name is Morise LeRoy, and when their son came along, Morise's wife wanted to name him LeRoy after his dad, but he hadn't told her about another son named Leroy in Washington state.  He didn't want to tell her, so he suggested LaRoy, since that's how they pronounce it.  I wonder if and when he told her about his other son.  She already had my grandpa, Calvin.

I used my basic Photoshop skills to work on Calvin's biological father's picture.  The other one I have still has a scratch across his face (accidental?), so Zak is going to help me fix it when we can get a good scan.

Calvin M. Hooper

John Marshall Sharp(e)