77 years later, a Sailor remembered

A couple weeks back I went to an assignment that, frankly, didn't appear to have much potential. The Freedom Museum, located at the Manassas Regional Airport, had received a tub of personal items that belonged to a sailor from WWII. A reporter and myself were going to the museum to have a look. Certainly there might be something to write, even if it were a press release type of story, but photos? What could be in the tub other than an old uniform and some shoes??








What we found instead was a fascinating collection of belongings and we pieced together an interesting story. Carson F. Powell, a Wilmington, N.C. native, joined the Navy as a 17 year-old (with parental permission, of course) in 1939. He trained in Norfolk and then transferred to San Diego to begin serving on the USS Selfridge, a Destroyer that was in Pearl Harbor that fateful day in 1941. The ship escaped mostly unharmed, continuing to serve at Guadalcanal, and other Pacific battles. However, on Oct. 6, 1943, at the Battle of Vella Lavella, off the coast of the Solomon Islands, the ship was blasted by a torpedo (although it didn't sink) and poor Carson Powell went missing, along with 35 other sailors. (See Joe's story here)

Was this Carson Powell and Gertie??

With love, Gertie...

I can imagine Carson passing his notebook down from his bunk, in between shifts, passing the time, playing tic-tac-toe with his shipmate...

Along with his notebooks was a math book for a correspondence course. Scribbled at the top of this page: "I think I'll go back to the farm"

There were personal notebooks, pictures and notes as well as the uniform. A young woman named Gertie sent photos with a loving note dated just 90 days before Carson went missing. Included in these pictures was one of Gertie clutching a young man's shoulder as they stood next to another couple. Was this Carson? I looked for clues. I wondered about the stories and the life cut short. The empty matchbooks. The lighter. The notebook with the geometry equations and tic-tac-toe. The worn Shellback certificate, asserting that Carson had indeed crossed the Equator. How did that hazing ceremony go? And the old shaving kit along with the nearly unused one with the birthday note, "Happy Birthday, I hope you like it, Virginia and David". The note from Virginia and David along with Gertie's notes and pictures makes me sad. They had no idea Carson would be lost at sea. The notes hang, suspended forever, as hopeful, loving greetings. Surely, they eagerly anticipated a reunion in the coming months.

But the mementos sit quietly in a glass case in a small museum, begging to tell a series of short stories to anyone who might listen about a young kid who joined the navy two years before the biggest war this world has ever known. His stories were long forgotton until a family finally passed them along 77 years later.

A comprehensive list of Carson's belongings returned to his parents on Feb. 28, 1944.