Hair(less)-raising initiation

One of the most hair-raising experience in my octogenarian life occurred when I didn’t have any hair to raise.

About four months prior to this incident on May 17, 1943, I was inducted into the U.S. Navy and received my 90-second bald head haircut, still 18 years old. I had attended boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Station for six weeks, then eight weeks diesel engine training school at Navy Pier in Chicago, Ill.

I was then assigned to the crew of U.S.S. LST 494 and we were sent to Solomons Naval Base in Frederick, Md., for training. Our green neophyte crew was taken to Chesapeake Bay to board an LST (Landing Ship Tank) training ship in the harbor. I was unfamiliar with such a craft and didn’t know what to expect.

Each year during hurricane season, I am reminded of the following hair-raising experience, a land lubber’s initiation. The ship was about 328 feet long and 50 feet wide, slightly longer and one third as wide as a football field, and had a flat bottom to boot.

Shortly after setting sail, we were in the center of a violent “no name” hurricane off of Cape Hatteras, N.C. The ship rattled and rolled. I decided to go topside to check things out, I opened the hatch door and quickly changed my mind. The flat steel deck vibrated one foot and would have flipped me into the water like a pancake.

I had a meal prior to this violent upheaval experience in the mess hall (lunch room). I found out why they were named mess halls, I was so seasick, that I thought I would die. Many of my shipmates were not so “ship shape” either. It was a baptism all right, not by gunfire, but by water.

Michael J. Lacivita is a Youngstown retiree and a member of the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame and Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame.