Thursday, March 28, 2024

Reunited

Posted

A basketball game played on the TV. Nurses and visitors passed through the hall outside the open door of the assisted living center room.

It seemed like a standard visit for Fred Benson, who volunteers to spend time with Interim Hospice patients.

He sat across from George Watters, each of them on a brown, cushioned chair.

They talked about the basketball game and chatted about life. That’s when they discovered an unusual connection.

“We sat there and talked for a little while, and we got to talking about him in the service flying,” Benson said. “And I asked him did he ever fly off the Philippine Sea (a ship), and he said, ‘Yeah I did!’”

That’s when they realized they were on the same ship, at the same time.

Around 1953 they were both aboard the USS Philippine Sea CVA-47 during the Korean War. Benson was a seaman; Watters was a pilot.

The coincidence was a pleasant surprise for both of them, and they sat in Watters’ room swapping war stories on several occasions, before COVID-19 made visiting impossible for Benson.

“I was just thinking, ‘What a small world we’ve got, when you can go a thousand miles somewhere else during the wartime and come back, finding someone who had been there too and you never met him,’” Benson said, chuckling. “To me that was just something. You’d never guess it would happen.”

Benson said it takes a lot of courage for pilots to fly planes during wars.

“I wouldn’t ever be brave enough to do that! It takes a special person,” he said. “A lot of pilots didn’t make it (back), but he did.”

‘...What a small world we’ve got, when you can go a thousand miles somewhere else during the wartime and come back, finding someone who had been there too and you never met him.’

Fred Benson

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