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brought home on their shields).
We walked to Mr. Spurlin’s barber shop, where he operated three chairs, entered, and sat side by side in two of them. All the while, the father was filling me in on the short and happy life of his only son, for I had told him right off that his son and I had been fellow officers in the same squadron but had not had the opportunity of becoming close personal friends before his death.
I also explained that his son’s friend from the same town, another fellow officer, had been too broken up over the boy’s death to escort him home; the father nodded understanding^, adding that the two had been close chums from childhood.
After sharing some more nostalgic memories of young Spurlin with me and, with his voice close to breaking, the father got around to that something which I had begun to feel in my bones was hovering at the edge of our conversation: “Mr. Eastham, do you believe that the Navy had trained my boy right before he crashed?” (He and his wife had been told, generally, how young Spurlin had died).
A full account of the intensive training Ensign Spurlin and I had received, from Pre-flight School onward, was my answer.
(By now I had gotten a rather full account of young Spurlin’s past and was seeing him now as a truly outstanding young fellow, the local hero in basketball and sports, his parents’ pride and joy, a dutiful and conscientious son. He was the sort of son who would have kept in close touch with his parents and kept them informed of each step of
See EASTHAM, p. 16
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