Thomas Wictor

Posts Tagged ‘LORAN’

The wretchedness of defeatism

My father was the most negative person I’ve ever known. If he’d won $20 million in a lottery, he would’ve gone into several years of depression that it wasn’t $40 million. My mother said that he wasn’t always like that. Going by the conversations we had right before he died, it’s clear that he didn’t…

 

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Don’t be like my father

My father was a very complex man. When he was in the Coast Guard, he climbed to the tops of LORAN (long-range navigation) towers that were 620 feet (189 meters) or more in height. He did it for fun. In 1949 he was stationed on Bikati Island, Makin Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands (red arrow)….

 

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Down the Orinoco with my father

My father Edward Wictor was a complete stranger. Since his death on February 23, 2013, he’s become even more of a mystery. Dad wrote three unpublished memoirs that are nearly impossible to read. Like the film Pulp Fiction, they don’t follow a chronological narrative. Instead, they jump around in time and place, they contain almost…

 

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Sometimes we’re not owed compensation

My father Edward Wictor was such a mystery that yesterday I hired a researcher to find his military records. In my parents’ house and garage, there is not a single document related to Dad’s service. He wrote a history of his time in the United States Coast Guard, but it raises more questions than it…

 

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Good-bye, pessimists. I’m sorry.

My father Edward Joseph Wictor was the most pessimistic person I’ve known. His favorite pronouncements were, “It’s really scary” and “Nothing’s ever gonna get better.” Here’s Dad at the age of twenty-three in 1951, serving in the U.S. Coast Guard at LORAN Station Bikati. Dad being Dad, the only thing I know about his time…

 

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