Faith of My Fathers Read Online Free

Academy when I was a midshipman there, and retire a vice admiral.)
    My grandmother once informed my grandfather of a new treatment for ulcers she had just read about in a magazine. Pounding his fist on a table, he shouted, “Not one penny of my money for doctors. I’m spending it all on riotous living.” My grandmother was reported to have given him an adequate allowance for that purpose while retaining unchallenged control over the rest of the family’s finances.
    While serving as a pallbearer for one of his Naval Academy classmates on a cold, rainy day at Arlington National Cemetery, my grandfather listened to a young officer suggest that he button up his raincoat to protect himself from the elements. The old man, raincoat flapping in the wind, looked at his solicitous subordinate and said, “You don’t think I got where I am by taking care of my health, do you?”
    My mother, who was enchanted by him, keeps in her living room a large oil portrait of the admiral, distinguished and starched in his navy whites. In reality he was a disheveled-looking man with a set of false teeth so ill-fitting that they made a constant clicking noise when he moved his jaw and caused him to whistle when he spoke.
    Admiral Halsey and he were such good friends that even in the strain of war, when my grandfather was Halsey’s subordinate, theirs was a relaxed and open relationship marked by mutual respect and candor. They delighted in ribbing each other mercilessly and playing practical jokes on each other. On the evening before a trip to Guadalcanal together, my grandfather had spent the night in Halsey’s quarters. He had absentmindedly left his teeth sitting on a bureau in Halsey’s bathroom. Halsey saw the teeth sitting there and, delighted by an opportunity to discomfit his old friend, slipped them into his shirt pocket. One of my grandfather’s aides recalled the scene that followed as the party was departing for Guadalcanal, my grandfather frantically searching for his missing teeth while Halsey badgered him to hurry up.
    â€œCan’t go, I can’t go. I’ve lost my teeth,” he implored. To which the much-amused Halsey responded, “How do you expect to run naval aviation if you can’t take care of your own teeth?”
    After another fruitless search, and a few more minutes of Halsey poking fun at him, and my grandfather hurling insults right back, my grandfather resigned himself to going to Guadalcanal toothless. At the plane, a grinning Halsey handed the teeth back to him, and caught, I am sure, a torrent of abuse from my grandfather.
    When in combat, he dispensed with all Navy regulations governing the attire of a flag officer. Disheveled, stooped, weighing only 140 pounds, and looking many years older than his age, he was, nevertheless, unmistakably Navy. Sailors who served under him called him, behind his back but affectionately, “Popeye the sailor man.” He wore a ratty, crushed green cap with its frame removed from the crown and an officer’s insignia sewn onto the visor. Halsey once described it as “unique in naval costume.” Like most sailors, my grandfather was a superstitious man, and he treasured his “combat cap” as a good luck talisman. So did everyone else on his flagship, fearing that any misfortune that befell the old man’s hat was a sign of approaching calamity. Whenever the wind blew the hat from its perch, men would dive to the deck and frantically scramble for it lest it be blown overboard. My grandfather, who was aware of the crew’s shared regard for the supernatural powers of his unorthodox headgear, watched in amused silence and grinned broadly when a relieved sailor handed it back to him.
    The cap was a gift from the wife of a naval aviator. My grandfather was much admired by the aviators under his command and by their families, who knew how deeply he grieved over the loss of his pilots. I have heard from