Would Mary and Ralph Deal really get on a jumbo jet and fly to Pearl Harbor to donate their treasured memories of World War II to a museum memorial now building on the historic battleship, the USS Missouri?
Don’t doubt it.
They did.
They went half around the world to return a special piece of teakwood that came from the deck of that ship — the spot where the Japanese signed the surrender — to that ship, and pictures of the gloriously happy, celebrating crowd that burst into the streets of Honolulu the day when the war officially ended and a bracelet Ralph made for Mary while he waited for her to get there and oh! so many things that will help future generations know what those long ago days were like.
And they’re no worse for wear even if they are both 88 years old now, even if Ralph has had two strokes in the past three years, even if they never dreamed they’d make a trip like that again.
Why, the fresh pineapple they brought back was the dining room table centerpiece at the Lutheran Home at Trinity Oaks on Christmas Eve.
And they put a new ornament, a very special ornament of the USS Missouri, in an eye-level conspicuous place on their very special Christmas tree that’s covered with ornaments reminiscent of more than 50 of the countries they’ve visited in their travels.
They got a pineapple ornament in Hawaii the first time they were there. This time Mary wanted an ornament representing the Mighty Mo, but she couldn’t find one.
So she made her own. A refrigerator magnet of the ship — with a holder attached — works very well, thank you.
The ornament will be packed away now that it’s after Christmas but, like Ralph’s USS Missouri cap and shirt, will always be a reminder of a trip they never expected to make again and will never forget.
The idea cropped up when they showed friends going to Hawaii mementoes of living there during the war years, especially an ashtray made of teakwood that came from the spot on the deck where the surrender was signed.
Ralph, master welder, headed a detail that cut it out and replaced it with a plaque marking the spot while he was working with the Navy at Pearl Harbor, and he was doing that because a Naval intelligence man tapped him on the shoulder at Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in Norfolk during the war and said he was needed at Pearl Harbor.
He’d go, he said, if Mary could join him. She could and did.
And they brought memories — like that ashtray — home when the war was over.
But with no children to leave them to ...
They wanted to give them to a “proper” museum, and what better place than the one now being built on the USS Missouri. If Ralph could make that trip ...
He made it, and Mike Weidenbach, curator of the museum on the most celebrated battleship in the U.S. Navy, treated them like royalty.
The 866-foot battleship is one of the “bookends” on Pearl Harbor’s Historic Battleship Row. The other is the USS Arizona, which was sunk on that Dec. 7, 1941, and from its watery grave bears witness to what happened there with a memorial listing all the names of sailors who lost their lives.
“We’re in the midst of constructing a 1940’s era pier,” Mike said in an e-mail to the Post, “actually adding structures and other bits of atmosphere to our existing 1980’s pier to give the basic impression of the WWII era.”
And collecting artifacts for the Missouri museum.
And he was the highlight of the Deals’ trip.
“Mike met us at the gate,” Mary says, and took them, and Dale and Stacy Wilson who went with them, on his elevator, showed them around the ship and then took them to his office to see what they had brought.
And he was especially excited about that piece of teakwood from the deck. The original bronze plaque placed where Ralph removed the piece of wood wore thin with all the polishing it got, she says.
“The sailors liked to do that,” she says, laughing, because they could do it sitting down.
It has been put in the Smithsonian Institution and replaced by a replica.
And he loved the pictures, tiny though they are.
“He’s going to blow them up and use them as a mural in the exhibit,” she says. “He said it would be magnificent when he got it done.”
And he couldn’t believe she was contributing the bracelet Ralph made to welcome her to Pearl Harbor way back then.
“I wore it a lot,” she says, but the museum is now their proper place.
Mike surprised them with what he already had. He’d bound news bulletins from those war days and showed them the name of Ralph Deal of China Grove among the “New Arrivals” on Nov. 8, 1943, and Ruth Deal on March 8, 1944.
“But the thing he really marveled about was Ralph’s book listing all the ships of the Navy. Ralph had marked all the ships he’d helped repair — 130 of them — and worked on some of them twice. And that didn’t include the LSTs, for the landings on the islands. He worked on those a lot. Mike was so pleased.”
They were so pleased.
And had such a good time being tourists and visiting the pineapple fields and the Dole plant and the Polynesian Cultural Center and attending its wonderful luau — and their old neighborhood.
“We lived close to the National Cemetery when we were there, and we saw the night blooming cereus that was still there after 55 years” and
marveled that the island’s three motels, none of them large, are now — but who can count how many?
They can count the ornaments on their tree and the 69 countries they’ve visited since they set out to see the world when they found out they weren’t going to have children.
But they did have children, after all, the countless children Mary has taught and all those, like the little third-grader, that she’s still tutoring as a volunteer.
And the children they’ll teach in that museum as the years go by.
“We’ll provide room,” Mike says, to display artifacts from people like the Deals, “and through them we’ll tell the story of the USS Missouri and her crew.” And the story of World War II in the place where it started and where it ended.
Now that’s a proper museum, believe the Deals, who added a proper ornament to their tree this year, and are wondering, if maybe, just maybe, they need to add another from a 70th trip.
Friday: Finding water.
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