Carl E. Clark and Ernie Cortez (Clark's son in the middle) showed up at our late evening presentation at Books Inc in Palo Alto. They are 92 and individually survived terrifying events during WWII. I started to get misty-eyed when they both spoke of their experiences from the audience. And when they signed one another's books--well that was it for V!
Snippet of Clark piece:
The next morning, the captain of the ship found me walking around—everybody was kind of in a daze. I was sitting down on deck, and I started to get up when I saw him approaching me. He said, “No, no, don’t get up.” So I stayed where I was. He crouched down in front of me, and he said, “I want to thank you because you saved my ship.”
But when they got together and decided who was going to get a medal, they weren’t going to give me one. All the prejudice that was going on at the time, I can understand why. There were three hundred men aboard that ship. Only six of them were black men. Our job was to take care of those officers—feed them, clean up after them, make up their bunks, and so forth. So here we got only six black men aboard the ship, and one of them the captain credits for saving a ship—that would have been pretty embarrassing for the captain, and for the Navy.
This picture (taken at the Presidio earlier in the day) will give you an idea of what Cortez went through during WWII.
Cortez joined Tom and I to all of our events in the Bay Area from morning to night on November 17. When I sat next to Cortez at the Presidio's Officers Club to do book signings, I noticed this poster hanging directly across from us. Strange, strange coincidence.
-VK
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