In Their Own Words, Part One

By Bill and Brenda Evans

What is the sum and substance of a man whose children call him preacher, teacher, poet, sailor, storyteller, tinkerer, dabbler, and Dad? For six hours last fall, we talked with Marilyn, David, Paul, and Jeff—Harrold David Harrison’s four children. Brother Harrold, at age 94, had recently died. He had spent more than 70 years in devoted love and service to his Lord, his family, and his denomination. Below are excerpts from those conversations:

EVANS: Your dad was born in 1925 in Henryetta, Oklahoma, one of 11 children in the middle of the Depression. What did he tell you about those early years?

PAUL: They bought chicken and ham bones to boil in water to make soup, or day-old bread for six cents a loaf. Sometimes, they got a few free groceries from the county.

DAVID: It was hard, but Dad was no complainer about that or anything else. He did tell us stories though, especially later in life.

PAUL: He said he wore threadbare shirts and pants, and the soles of his shoes wore out and broke loose. He’d cut off a piece of old bicycle inner tube and tie it on. Sometimes, the inner tube would break loose, too, and make a flapping noise on the sidewalk. Mr. McFall, his Methodist Sunday School teacher, heard Dad’s shoes making a racket one day, and said, “Harrold, go down to the store on Main Street and tell them to give you a pair of shoes and put it on my bill.” Dad said that every quiet step he took after that reminded him just how powerful kindness can be. Not much later, Mr. McFall died. Dad said, “I thought God had died.”

MARILYN: He never forgot what it was like to be poor and hungry. I live in Nashville and he did, too, so I was with him a lot. I’d open his refrigerator and start to throw something out because of its expiration date. He’d say, “We can use it!” He never wanted to be wasteful.

DAVID: He told me he walked 16 blocks to school until one of his teachers gave him a weekend job. He bought a used bicycle and rode after that. He paid the seller $1 a week until he paid it off.

JEFF: He always loved bicycles. Long after he retired, he would buy old ones, fix broken parts, oil the chain, spruce them up, and sell them. When he was 88, he fixed up an 18-speed to sell. But when he road-tested it, he took a tumble as he pulled back into his driveway. He was scraped up and bleeding, so he went to the after-hours clinic down the street. He told me that he witnessed to the nurse in the examining room. She prayed and accepted Christ right there and came to church the next Sunday. Dad told everybody, “When I walked into that clinic, this preacher needed a nurse, and the nurse needed a preacher.”

EVANS: At age 17, just before his senior year in high school and before he came to know the Lord, Harrold left Oklahoma for California. Why?

PAUL: I don’t remember that he ever said why, but I figure it was the promise of $1.26 an hour at the West Coast shipyards. It was 1942. He went to Richmond, near San Francisco, where cargo ships were being built—Liberty ships they were called. He worked from midnight to seven at the shipyards and then hustled to class from eight to one to finish up his senior year in high school.

DAVID: I don’t know, but I’ve always thought he hitchhiked there. Maybe because that’s what I did in my rebellious days in the 1970s. But I never asked. He roomed with an older lady and her daughter. During Dad’s last years, we talked every day. He was in Nashville, of course, and I was in Michigan. I’d come home from teaching all day, slug down a cup of coffee, and dial his number.
Sometimes, we’d talk for an hour, especially about his earlier days. For a long time, he never told his Navy war stories—too hard, too emotional. He said Leroy Forlines encouraged him to start. He and Johnny Carter, history professor at Welch College, were close. Johnny asked Dad to talk to his classes about his experiences in WWII. So, the stories began to come out.

PAUL: In 1943, right after he graduated from high school in Richmond, he was drafted and soon shipped out to Pearl Harbor aboard the USS California. A little later he was transferred to the USS Maryland.

DAVID: Amazingly, Dad had only two and a half weeks of basic training. His first job on the Maryland was six decks down—in the powder room. They locked him in, he said, and he handled 55-pound silk bags of gun powder pellets and cranked them through to the sailors loading the Maryland’s 16-inch guns.

PAUL: It took a lot of bags—five for each projectile they fired.

EVANS: The Maryland was a pretty famous ship, one of the seven battleships lined up in Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. It received minor damage, but her sailors engaged all their antiaircraft batteries and also rescued a lot of sailors from the sinking Oklahoma moored alongside her. By 1943, when your dad was sent to Pearl Harbor, the Maryland was back in full action. From what your dad said, Maryland’s crew called her “Fighting Mary” for good reason.

PAUL: Yes, at Saipan in 1944, Dad was sleeping on deck with his sailor cap as a pillow when a torpedo ripped through the bow, blowing off 18 feet of it. Other times, they were struck by torpedoes or kamikazes and once had to abandon ship by a breeches buoy—like a saddled zipline to another battleship.

DAVID: Dad said there were 18 kamikaze attacks, and two were successful.

EVANS: Those two were at Okinawa and Leyte, weren’t they, where the Maryland was doing bombardment? Both times she went through quick repairs and right back into service.

PAUL: Dad told me he had a piece of one of those kamikazes at his house.

MARILYN: If he did, I didn’t find it. Because I live in Nashville, I’m the one to go through things. It’s emotional, like going through their lives. Mom and Dad never threw anything away: photos, papers, receipts, cancelled checks. But I found nothing that looked like a piece of a kamikaze.

DAVID: Dad said when he finally got out of the powder room, it was because he could type.

MARILYN: And he was good at it, even in later years. Fast and accurate!

DAVID: He typed logs and reports, four levels above deck on the bridge. Finally, not locked in six decks below.

EVANS: The Maryland was the flagship for the fleet at one point, wasn’t it, so an admiral was on board.

DAVID: Yes, and Dad was typing for him at a table brought up from the kitchen when a kamikaze was sighted. The admiral said, “Harrison, we better crawl under your table.” They did. That was one of the unsuccessful attacks. But he was on deck once when several died. That was hard to talk about. He said he never forgot the smell of burning gas and flesh, and that they buried 31 at sea. Dad’s brother Charles was on board the Maryland with him for a brief time. He was a marine, and his unit was preparing to launch a land assault on an island.

MARILYN: He talked about those war days in the Navy, but I think the hard Depression years and his travels all those years for Randall House shaped his life more than the war years did.

EVANS: Okay, then. Let’s talk about those years.

(In the next edition of ONE Magazine, Harrold’s children will recount his conversion, call to preach and teach, poetry, travels for Randall House, and his proposal of marriage to their mother Lari on their first date.)

About the Writer: Bill and Brenda Evans live in Ashland, Kentucky. Contact them at beejayevans@windstream.net.