An event two-thirds of a century old brings gratitude today

When Jim Quinn encounters a bell ringer and the familiar red kettle this time of year, despite limited means he digs deep in his pocket and gives what he can, to help those who have less.

And when he does, it takes him back, far back, in time.

Back to November 1945. He was in the Army and had been in his native Athens County on furlough. The war was over, but not everyone had been demobbed and sent home. Now he went to Camp Pickett in Virginia, then to Camp Shanks in Rockland County, N.Y., then to a ship docked in New York City.

Neither he nor any of the other 4,600 GIs aboard the USS W.P. Richardson, AP-118, had the faintest idea what was in store for them.

"I knew no one," he remembers. "When we all loaded on the ship, it was snowing and no one knew where we were headed. We all had infantry training, but that wasn't much of a clue. It was 10 or 11 at night when I got on the ship." As he boarded, he was handed a small package by someone from the Salvation Army. "Then I went below. The ship was crowded, and I was in the bottom hold.

"I didn't get much sleep that night. I smoked then, so I got up and went to latrine to smoke – the place was full of GIs, all sick. We must have been underway, I figured. I thought I'd get up on deck; had to crowd my way through.

"We were still at the dock, and half the guys were sick already. This was not going to be a good trip."

In due course the ship embarked, which is how 66 years ago today the 18-year-old soldier from Athens County was alone in a crowd in a ship on the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The crossing took 11 days and was scarcely smooth.

"Sometimes it was so rough the ship's screws would come out of the water, and the whole ship shook."

At some point, sitting on a bunk deep in the bottom-most hold of the pitching ship, he opened the Salvation Army packet he had been handed as he boarded.

"It contained a little Bible, a razor, toothbrush, a little tube of toothpaste and a book," he remembers.

"The book was 'Useless Cowboy.'" (By Alan LeMay, it is a light-hearted take on the more serious westerns of the day, some of which LeMay himself wrote.)

"I didn't have a lot of education, so I don't know if I'd ever read a book clear through," Jim says. "But I read that one, and enjoyed it. It made the time pass."

On the far side of the Straits of Gibraltar, they encountered a Liberty ship that had broken in two, with half still afloat. The British navy had sent out a crew to try to tow it to shore, but now the British tug was itself in trouble. Finally, a French destroyer was sent to rescue both. "We spent several hours circling and watching that. It was so rough you'd sometimes see daylight under the hull of the Liberty ship."

Finally the Richardson docked in Naples, Italy.

"All the boys were assigned to different places. I was sent to Leghorn, Italy – it's also called Livorno. The first thing I did was guard in the mailroom where we had German prisoners sorting mail. I was amazed – they knew more about the U.S. than I did." His duties went on to include guarding mail trains, standing base guard duty, and so on. After a year, he got to come back home.

Somewhere along the way he went to the movies.

"Gary Cooper was my favorite actor back then, and I went to see 'Along Came Jones'," which turned out to be the movie adaptation of 'Useless Cowboy.' Jim remembered the book, and the Salvation Army packet, and how it eased for him what had been a miserable ocean voyage for most of the soldiers aboard the Richardson.

"They became my favorite charity," he says. So much so, in fact, that since then, when he can he tries to do something extra.

"On the Monday morning before Thanksgiving, I realized I could afford to buy some turkeys for some people so they could have Thanksgiving," he says. "So I called the Salvation Army and we arranged to get them some gift certificates so people could go and pick up food for Thanksgiving.

"I'm on a fixed income, but I get by. Don't make me the hero of the story. They are the heroes."

Still, that an 84-year-old man living in Guysville, Ohio, would remember a kindness shown him six and a half decades ago says something.

As does the fact that he always remembers the bell ringers and their red buckets when he sees them.

Now, I guess, I will, too.

Editor's note: Dennis E. Powell was an award-winning reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio and becoming a full-time crackpot. His column appears on Mondays. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.