THE LOCKET of LOVE

“What’s this about his grandmother?” My mother came rushing into the dining room from the kitchen as my brother, Fred had asked: “Isn’t that the locket Peter brought home from Egypt or Australia that time?”

            As Kay looked at me, and said, “Why Peter, your grandmother sure gets around!” I was instantly wishing the floor would somehow open and swallow me. But it didn’t.

            You see, it’s this way. I had met Kay in New York some three years earlier. She was brought up to the British Apprentices Club at Chelsea Hotel as a guest of one of their hostesses. I happened to be there as a guest of Tommy Finn, an apprentice on the MS Western Prince. I seemed to hit it off with this black-eyed beauty right away, and for a couple of weeks until my ship sailed, I escorted her home from the club each night, detouring by way of Times Square to her residence hall on East Eighteenth Street. When I sailed that snowy December day to West Africa for a three-month trip, I went in hopes that she would still be in New York when I returned. She wasn’t.

            I joined another ship and sailed out for a five-month trip to Egypt, via South Africa. When I returned in November, I called at the British Club and learned Kay had returned to her home as she couldn’t find her dream job in New York. I didn’t know where her home was. In late December, I found in my notes the phone number GRamercy 5-8924. I couldn’t remember what it was, so I called it. Mrs. Garrison, the house mother at Kay’s one time residence hall answered, so I asked her for Kay. She gave me her home address in Fall River, Massachusetts.

            On a chance, I sent a Christmas Card. Right after I joined another ship, I received a Happy New Year’s card from Kay in return. This card gave me an excuse to take the weekend off and travel up to Fall River to meet Kay and her parents. When I returned to New York, my ship sailed to Australia.

            In Melbourne, one day, I happened to see a crystal heart-shaped locket on an old fashioned gold chain in a shop I was passing. I thought of Kay, and purchased it.

            When I returned to San Francisco in April, I immediately called Kay on a pay phone to her home in Massachusetts. I was so happy to make contact with her, I managed to run up a phone bill of over $23. Since I was only earning $35 per month, I figured the rest of my pay would just about purchase a bus ticket to take me back to New York.

            When I returned to New York, I was nearly out of funds, and headed for the Union hall to put in for another ship job. It was early enough, that I stopped in an Automat for morning coffee, and while looking through the newspaper came across an article about a new Officer’s training school for merchant seamen who had a minimum of 19 month’s sea time, and was 19 years old. This school was to be at New London, Connecticut. I just fit the criteria, so instead of the Union hall, I went to the War Shipping Administration office to apply. I was accepted, and sent to New London, Connecticut for a four-month’s training course.

            The courses were Monday to Friday, so I had week-ends off. I used these weekends to visit either New York or Fall River, so spent many weekends visiting Kay’s family. As the weeks went by, I thought about this locket, and being quite bashful, tried to figure out how to give it to Kay with all the sentimental attachments I wanted to convey. I couldn’t just say, “I’m in love with you!” So I made up a yarn that this locket had belonged to my grandmother, who had died ten days before I was born. It was to go to me if I were a girl, or to pass on to a love as the years passed. Since I would be sailing into the torpedo infested North Atlantic, I did not want to chance losing such an heirloom. I gave it to her for safekeeping. As the summer passed, I asked her to wear it.

            After September, I went to San Francisco and was sent to New Orleans for a ship assignment. In late January, 1943, the ship was torpedoed, and I sailed with part of my crew nearly one thousand miles, landing in Barbados.

Before I left Barbados via Trinidad and returned to Mobile, Alabama to payoff the ship, a troopship the Dorchester” was sunk in the North Atlantic. Headlines in the papers told of the many possible survivors succumbing to hypothermia in the cold waters before they were rescued.

Kay read these headlines, and thought it was my ship. When I called her about ten days later, she was so happy to hear I was still alive, she quit her current job at the Pentagon in Washington and took the first train to Mobile to join me.

When we met, I took her to New Orleans to be married. Then brought her to the West Coast to meet my family and so I could sail the relatively safer Pacific Ocean. Hence that dinner with my family.

I had forgotten about the sentimental story I had used when I gave the locket to her, thus when my brother asked: “Isn’t that the locket Peter brought home from Egypt or Australia that time?” Kay responded: “Why Peter, your grandmother sure gets around!”

Peter and Kay Chelemedos, in their 90s and still together, live in Edmonds.

                                         Peter, Kay and their daughter Penny. They seem to have 

                                         survived the locket incident pretty well. 

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