thedrifter
05-23-06, 08:08 AM
For some, every day is Memorial Day
Veteran's recollection of near-death moment still haunts his dreams
By Valerie Zehl
Press & Sun-Bulletin
JOHNSON CITY -- "I've got the best family in the world," Frank Gontesky says by way of introduction. "Two daughters, two grandkids and one great-grandson -- he's my buddy ..."
And he had more than 55 years of great marriage to a great lady, he explains. He lost Kay a few months ago. In the living room of his Johnson City home he displays the triangular case holding the flag he was given when she died in January.
Kay served stateside in the Marines during World War II, and he was a hospital corpsman, then a pharmacist mate 3rd class, in the Navy.
Gontesky, 85, doesn't need a special holiday like Memorial Day to remind him of the perils of military service and those who never made it back home.
He was almost one of those, he says. He nearly missed out on having that wonderful wife, those two terrific daughters and everything else, because on May 25, 1945, he almost died.
It was an ordinary morning when he and about 200 buddies were going about their business aboard the USS Bates, a destroyer patrolling and escorting convoys just south of Okinawa in the Pacific.
Then WHAM, WHAM -- two Japanese planes almost simultaneously ruptured the starboard hull and smashed the pilothouse.
"I was below deck when we were hit," he says. "I had to get topside to get out."
The crew hadn't had time to catch its collective breath when a third Japanese kamikaze pilot dropped a 500-pound bomb, blasting a hole through the portside hull of the Buckley-class vessel.
With 21 men dead or missing, the commanding officer ordered the crew to abandon ship. Trouble was, Gontesky wasn't much of a swimmer.
The boy who grew up on a farm in the Town of Union had cooled his shins in a creek many times, but he had never learned to do much besides crawl on all fours in the water.
Now it was swim or die.
He almost died.
"I got so tired; once my arms went numb and once I went down. And to be honest to God, I don't know how I got back up," he says. "It was all over for me, I thought. I was plain lucky I'm alive, you know?"
For months afterward, he wondered why.
"When I knew I made it and I knew a lot of guys didn't, I thought, maybe I should have gone down with them. For me to be alive when they didn't make it."
He cried a lot, he says now.
After he and Kay married in 1949, she soon insisted on twin beds. His arms would often flail around and wallop his wife as Gontesky slept, reliving the terrifying 20 minutes he spent in the ocean that day.
He had nightmares then, and he still dreams about it sometimes, he says.
And the incident left its physical effects. Gontesky swallowed not only sea water, but also the mix of oil, gas and acids that had churned around him. It wrecked his stomach, he says, and it never recovered.
Now, many days are Memorial Days for him. He thinks of his buddies, the guys he'd shoot the bull with every morning in the fantail of the ship.
That fantail had taken a hit, and so did some of those men.
"They were from New Jersey, from California -- they were the greatest bunch of guys I've ever known in my life," he says. "Like Tom Brokaw says, it was the greatest generation."
His kids, Kathy Dickerson of Johnson City and Linda Beebe of Danby, are proud of their parents' military service.
Gontesky's seven medals and grainy black-and-white photos of the USS Bates and the USS New York, two ships on which he served, decorate one wall in his living room. Dog tags and the smiling face of a young sailor are forever captured under glass.
That sailor made it home. He had a great life, with what he believes is the best family anybody could ever have.
But every day, Frank Gontesky is mindful of all the young men and women who never made it back.
Ellie
Veteran's recollection of near-death moment still haunts his dreams
By Valerie Zehl
Press & Sun-Bulletin
JOHNSON CITY -- "I've got the best family in the world," Frank Gontesky says by way of introduction. "Two daughters, two grandkids and one great-grandson -- he's my buddy ..."
And he had more than 55 years of great marriage to a great lady, he explains. He lost Kay a few months ago. In the living room of his Johnson City home he displays the triangular case holding the flag he was given when she died in January.
Kay served stateside in the Marines during World War II, and he was a hospital corpsman, then a pharmacist mate 3rd class, in the Navy.
Gontesky, 85, doesn't need a special holiday like Memorial Day to remind him of the perils of military service and those who never made it back home.
He was almost one of those, he says. He nearly missed out on having that wonderful wife, those two terrific daughters and everything else, because on May 25, 1945, he almost died.
It was an ordinary morning when he and about 200 buddies were going about their business aboard the USS Bates, a destroyer patrolling and escorting convoys just south of Okinawa in the Pacific.
Then WHAM, WHAM -- two Japanese planes almost simultaneously ruptured the starboard hull and smashed the pilothouse.
"I was below deck when we were hit," he says. "I had to get topside to get out."
The crew hadn't had time to catch its collective breath when a third Japanese kamikaze pilot dropped a 500-pound bomb, blasting a hole through the portside hull of the Buckley-class vessel.
With 21 men dead or missing, the commanding officer ordered the crew to abandon ship. Trouble was, Gontesky wasn't much of a swimmer.
The boy who grew up on a farm in the Town of Union had cooled his shins in a creek many times, but he had never learned to do much besides crawl on all fours in the water.
Now it was swim or die.
He almost died.
"I got so tired; once my arms went numb and once I went down. And to be honest to God, I don't know how I got back up," he says. "It was all over for me, I thought. I was plain lucky I'm alive, you know?"
For months afterward, he wondered why.
"When I knew I made it and I knew a lot of guys didn't, I thought, maybe I should have gone down with them. For me to be alive when they didn't make it."
He cried a lot, he says now.
After he and Kay married in 1949, she soon insisted on twin beds. His arms would often flail around and wallop his wife as Gontesky slept, reliving the terrifying 20 minutes he spent in the ocean that day.
He had nightmares then, and he still dreams about it sometimes, he says.
And the incident left its physical effects. Gontesky swallowed not only sea water, but also the mix of oil, gas and acids that had churned around him. It wrecked his stomach, he says, and it never recovered.
Now, many days are Memorial Days for him. He thinks of his buddies, the guys he'd shoot the bull with every morning in the fantail of the ship.
That fantail had taken a hit, and so did some of those men.
"They were from New Jersey, from California -- they were the greatest bunch of guys I've ever known in my life," he says. "Like Tom Brokaw says, it was the greatest generation."
His kids, Kathy Dickerson of Johnson City and Linda Beebe of Danby, are proud of their parents' military service.
Gontesky's seven medals and grainy black-and-white photos of the USS Bates and the USS New York, two ships on which he served, decorate one wall in his living room. Dog tags and the smiling face of a young sailor are forever captured under glass.
That sailor made it home. He had a great life, with what he believes is the best family anybody could ever have.
But every day, Frank Gontesky is mindful of all the young men and women who never made it back.
Ellie