Gullage, Leo, COX

My wife and I have traveled the world but "tempus Fugit," we are getting old. I am now 84 and counting so I am limited to a once a year vacation. Although I am semi-retired, I do a little service work for my older clients. It seems as we get a little older we look backwards and see things a little clearer so we have taken to visiting old friends and relatives. Recently I attended my 65th high school reunion and found that out of a class of about thirty five we had about sixteen still remaining. However they seem to be going quicker as we have lost four since the last reunion. This year we look to rent a cabin in northern Maine near the canadien border and do some salmon fishing. My mother taught me to play golf when I was fourteen. I played off and on throughout my career but business always came first. When I went into the insurance business golf was a way of meeting people so I took it up serously. I joined an exclusive counrty club and became an avid golfer. I played to a 12-13 handicap. When I reached age eighty my game began to deriorate and I became very frustrated and summarily gave up the game. Actually I became so mad at myself I walked off the golf course and never returned.

In the year 2007 I was diagnosed with arrythmyea. I went to a doctor that was said to be the best heart doctor in the city. He nearly killed me. I was at his office weekly with him trying to control my heart rate with medicine. He finally decided that I needed a pacemaker. Well that didn't help. My blood pressure was sky high and my heart rate was always around 150. My golfing buddy is a retired pharmacist so I asked him to recommend a doctor. He got me an appointment with a cardiologist from New York. This doctor came into the room and I told him what the problem was and he left and came back with a goofy looking machine and attached it to my chest and in ten minutes he made a few adjustments and told me "there, I don't think you will have anymore problems" and my b/p and heart rate are normal and have been ever since. Can you imagine the difference in doctors.

At seventeen I joined the Navy. I never told anyone about my preteen and teen years for having a penchant for getting hurt so no one knew of my broken bones and injuries. I was just a very healthy seventeen year old. I loved the Navy and being on board ship. The food was great and the sights were many to see. We were memebrs of a unit called the Armed Guard and we were a guncrew on mostly Liberty Ships. We were all teenagers or in our early twenties. The idea was we were less likely to get sick because there were no doctors or corpsmen on Liberty Ships. If  you got wounded on a Liberty Ship you either died or got better. That's why we were called "Cannon Fodder".

One day as we were approaching the Irish Sea just off the coast of England. I had an accident. It was one of those days when the clouds were high in the sky and the sun was shining brightly through the clouds. There was a stiff breeze from the northeast and the sea was very choppy. The Commodore of the convoy ran up some flags to send a message and each ship had to answer. I was on the bridge and the signalman went over to the flag box which looked like an oversized coffin, to run up the flags and he forgot to lock the cover in place. I immediatey saw it and jumped forward to grab the cover so it would not come down on the signalman. I stumbled and flipped in the air and came down on my head. You guessed it. I came down on the same spot where I had the plate put in as a boy. I felt I wasn't hurt but I was to learn later that a scalp wound bleeds produsely and this sure did. They took me to my quarters and the ship's purser came and bandgaged my head. I looked like a Turk. I was given two aspirins and went to sleep. The next morning they could not wake me. They thought I was in a coma. They waited another day and were about to notify the Commodore when I woke up.They asked me how I felt and I told�? them I felt great and I stood my regular watch that night.