Author : Bruce Holdt
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 113 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2013-08-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781483683812
Gunboats Forever by Bruce Holdt Pdf
I made the decision to write this book, based on the encouragement of my children. Often, when we would get together, they would ask me to tell them about some incident that happened to me when I was in the navy. I would tell the story, and they would say that I should write a book about adventures at sea. I am writing this book after having a liver transplant. Before I had the transplant, I had been sick with severe liver disease, for five years, almost dying twice. A week before my transplant, I had a compression fracture of one of my discs in my back. I was standing, talking to a nurse when all of the sudden the disc fractured. I was in such pain that I had to lie down. The only way that I am not in any pain is when I am in the hospital and get a shot of morphine. At home, I get some relief form oxycodone, but it never lasts long enough. Today, I am writing this with a considerable amount of pain. Writing seems to take my mind off the pain. All of the events in this book occurred during the year of 1976. My family consisted of me, Bruce Edward Holdt. I was thirty-three years old. My wife, Karen Wallin Holdt, was thirty-four; my oldest daughter, Marnie Esther Holdt, was ten years old; my son, Theodore Charles Holdt, was six years old; and my youngest daughter, Melissa “Missy” Holdt, was five years old. I was born in a small town in northern Minnesota called Clitherall. It got its name from my mother’s Mormon ancestors who came to northern Minnesota to teach the Indians English. This group of Mormons broke off from the Mormons in Illinois who followed Brigham Young to Utah. The biggest difference between the Mormons who continued on with Brigham Young and the splinter group was that these followers of a man named Cutler did not believe in or allow polygamy. My ancestors were called Cutlerittes. Cutler died on the way to Minnesota, and the group was then led by my great-great-grandfather Sylvester Whiting and his brothers Chauncey and Isaac. One day, while looking for the place, it was ordained that they settle and start a community. Sylvester and Isaac stopped in a grove of trees and noticed a bark flap on one of the trees that had partially grown back. Sylvester pried the bark back and noticed the name Clitherall carved on the tree. The Mormons all took this as sign from God and named the lake and the settlement they started there Clitherall. Later, they found out that Clitherall was the name of a U.S. Army captain who lived in Minneapolis. Clitherall had written his name on the piece of bark to show he had surveyed the area. My father’s ancestry is much simpler. My great-grandfather Torger Olsen Holdt was born in Haagland, Norway, on April 5, 1835. He lived there until the age of sixteen. He then immigrated to America, settling in Claremont, Iowa. He married Bertha Holdt and took her name. Torger and Bertha drove a mule team with a wagon with all their earthly goods from Iowa to Minnesota in the fall of 1871. Torger had a son named Olavas, who is my grandfather. In 1922, my father, Bertram T. Holdt, was born. He married my mother, Lorraine Gleesing, and had two sons—me and my younger brother, Verne. When we lived in Clitherall, it had a population of only fifty people. Nearby was the small lake called Clitherall. One of my earliest memories was being taught how to swim there by my father. I quickly learned to swim and was most happy when I was in the water. We lived about three hundred yards from the lake. My brother, who was a year younger than I, and I would walk to the lake every day that it was warm enough to swim, which was usually May through September. Growing up in a small town in Minnesota, with an alcoholic father and a mother who worked every day, was tough. My mother expected me to take care of my younger brother, cooking all of our meals when she was working. This experience made me self-reliant, self-assured, and a good student in every form of education I experie