To the Editor,

I was born March 19, 1923. My life started as a teenager in 1938 in Washington High School, when Jack Cherry operated a grocery store on Third and Pierce streets; when the Atlantic Coastline Railroad went up and down Third Street to the waterfront.

I went to the First Christian Church and became a Boy Scout in Troop 21, with the leadership of R.E. King as scoutmaster. Mr. King was a home security life insurance agent. With his leadership, I became an Eagle Scout in or around 1938.

I attended Washington High School in the ninth grade when it was on Second and Bridge streets. (The) only sports in high school then was four clay tennis courts on Third Street on school property.

We moved to what used to be Whichards Beach in 1938, so we had to change schools. I attended Chocowinity High, a new school. I attended 10^th and 11^th grades, finished school in 1940.

At that time, I was working for Swifty Garris as a soda jerk, which was (at) Tayloe Drug Company (in) downtown Washington. John Morgan and I worked as soda jerks in 1938 and 1939. Joe Tunstall came to Tayloe’s Drug as the first licensed druggist. This was in the late 1930s.

After high school, this was when my life really began. At the time it looked as if we, as U.S. citizens, might have to go to war right out of high school. I went to Newport News shipbuilders in Portsmouth, Virginia, Navy Yard and applied for work. I was called to work by Portsmouth Navy Yard in October 1941. We were put to work seven days a week.

This part needs to be remembered: I was working on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan. I well remember that day. I heard Franklin Delano Roosevelt as President of the U.S. He called over the loudspeakers in the Nave Yard. These were his words: “We are at war. Pearl Harbor was just bombed.”

I close with this in mind: Dec. 7, 1941.

Warren Whichard

Chocowinity