Henard Otha Cochran

Navy man. Blev högst 74 år.

Äktenskap med Vivien Thelma Holmgren (1911 - 1955)

Äktenskap med Nannie Elizabeth "Lib" Bellamy (1919 - )

Noteringar

LCM: During 1924, Lewisburg had a passenger train and Tom and Millie escorted Henard on the train to Nashville's Military Recruiting Office where he was signed up at the age of 16. I see where the recruiter had typed in the form that he was 18, but that is scratched out and corrected to 16. He went to Basic Training in Portsmouth, Virginia and must have taken a test and scored high grades that he was put into the Pharmacist's Mate School. From there he was sent to Quantico, Virginia to accompany the US Marines (5th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, and 11 Regiment) He was enlisted for 4 years at a pay of $21.00 a month. In August 1925 he has an abscess tooth removed, which could be wisdom teeth. His first letter dated Nov 25, 1925 was from Juan, Nicaragua talks about chasing a bandit named Sandino and bullets whizzing past his head. He was the Marine's medic. While Henard was there a massive earthquake occurred and the fighting came to a stand still. In 1926 it looks like he's back in America and has an operation for appendicitis. Then he goes back to Nicaragua from about May 10, 1927 to March 1927 where he brings back patients or the dead from the battlefield to American hospital on East Coast. September 1928 he is stationed to Newport, Rhode Island to the Hospital Ship called the USS Relief and it is here he manages to register an automobile.

It looks like in 1930 he visits home (Lewisburg) it maybe for the first time, or it is the first evidence I can prove. In May 20-25 1930 he is in Norfolk, Va for Fleet Week and in November he is shipped to San Pedro, Mare Island, Vallejo, California. In 1931 it looks like he is in Hawaii and Balboa, (Panama) Canal Zone. Then looks like he goes back to Nicaragua. A letter is written from USS Relief December 14, 1931 he makes it back to the US, then looks like he takes a train through states of California, Utah and Colorado heading to Brooklyn. (I wondered if he stopped by in Lewisburg on this trip.) He's on his second enlistment for 3 years and gets a "Good Conduct Metal," and "2nd Nicaraguan Campaign Metal." In Brooklyn, he is stationed to the US Naval Medical Supply Depot. There is a letter from Vivien inviting Henard over for dinner around Sept 12, 1932 and they elope in Albany NY, Jan 21, 1933. Not sure why they married in Albany.

hey get an apartment, but Henard gets stationed to a Medical School in Portsmouth, Va. Vivien stays in Brooklyn, much to her dismay. She had a job at an insurance company and she keeps it even though back during the "Depression" a married woman was supposed to give up her job so a man can be employed in those positions. His letters to her still use her maiden name on the envelope to hide the fact that she is married. She then moves into another apartment with a couple to save money. Sometimes on long weekends Henard tries to travel to NY. He is miserable in Va and before he can leave, all of his uniforms that he stored at a YMCA basement in Norfolk, Va. are destroyed when the basement floods because of a hurricane. He gets a transfer to Washington, DC's Naval Medical School which is closer to NY. Sometimes Vivien visits DC. The couple that Viv lives with have a baby and they get mad at Viv when they find out she has a large savings account (they snuck and read a personal letter that Henard and Viv had $2000. stashed away). The lady, jealous of the secret savings account, tells her work that Viv is married, betraying Viv and hoping Viv would get fired, so Viv moves out of their apartment. About that time Henard is finished with Medical School in May of 1934 has this 3rd reenlistment and the couple continue living in Brooklyn until April of 1935. He makes a dash home alone to Lewisburg and still hasn't told the folks that he is married. (He thought it would break his Mother's heart, if she knew there was another woman in her favorite son's life.)

He travels through the Panama Canal, on to San Diego, California and to San Francisco, then on to his next post in Guam (July 1935.) Viv still manages to keep her job despite being told on and she follows behind her husband on the SS Virginia, seeing Cuba, Panama Canal, San Diego, San Francisco, Hawaii and landing in Guam in December of 1936. Henard's brother broke the news to the old folks that they were married about the time Viv headed to Guam. The couple live there for two years and at the end of the term they are able to take a shopping trip into the Orient. They visit Manila, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kobe and Toyko, Japan in which they are there just before Japan decides to invade Manchuria, China in 1937. There is a newspaper photo shown in the Toyko newspaper of Vivien leaving a small boat with Henard helping her. I had a Japanese neighbor translate the article. Vivien keeps a diary of the trip and mentions seeing a (Japanese submarine's) telescope watching them on their ship. Some of their letters/photos mention receiving mail from the first Air Mail flight from the "China Clipper."

They go back to the US to Newport, Rhode Island until 1939. They are happy in RI as they make good friends with some Swedes at a Lutheran Church. Before they leave RI there is a very destructive hurricane that batters the area. We have picture postcards of the devestation. Henard is ordered to sail to San Diego, but he explains that Viv is pregnant by this time and he wants to drive instead of sail to the West Coast. He has his orders changed from sailing to driving her across country to San Diego. He has permission to go, but the orders say they are not going to pay for his travel expenses. They arrive in San Diego, but Henard is sent out to sea right away and Viv has to rely on neighbors to help her along with her pregnancy. Henard is sailing between San Diego and Hawaii when word reaches him that Vivien delivers (my father), Wayne. Viv has a lot of complications and nearly dies of heart problems. (She had rheumatic fever as a child and that did some heart damage.) You can tell that Henard was having a nervous breakdown by this time and was finally able to take emergency leave after finding out that his newborn son was accidentally burned by a hot water bottle he was sleeping with and it leaked and scalded the baby's back. He did manage to stay for baby's first Christmas before heading back to his ship the USS Dobbin. The Dobbin gets moved from San Diego to be in Honolulu Hawaii and this allows Viv and the baby he opportunity to be allowed to be posted on the island as soon as they fully recovered. They seem to live happily on the island up until they were attacked at Pearl Harbor. Henard was on the Dobbin in the harbor during the attack reading a newspaper and saw the plume of smoke from the USS Arizona and he had two men killed on his ship from shrapnel and he attended to them slip sliding in a pool of their blood. They were in a gun turret. Viv did not see or hear from her husband for a week. There are several letters of panic from friends and family wondering if they were OK. They were evacuated from the island in March of 1942 to San Francisco. Vivien and Wayne were sent to Henard's parent's home in Lewisburg to keep them away from any military targets. He was sent to a naval hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Many of Grandfather's letters tell Vivien to "watch that blood pressure."

Just as Henard served in Naval Hospital in Philly, he got a promotion to Chief Pharmacist Mate. Vivien and Wayne were living under cruder conditions that they were used in living with her in-laws. Meanwhile, Henard's parents who had been unhappily married for sometime, were showing a lot of stress. Vivien noticed their toxic relationship while living with them and after witnessing Tom's temper flare she decided to move to town as she had planned to anyway. When she moved, she took the old lady (Millie) with her. When things calmed down a bit Viv did take some meals out to Tom occasionally. Millie never moved back home. Up until this time Henard only served in the Pacific Theatre, and had never been to the European fronts. March of 1943 Henard was about to get shipped out and this time he almost went to North Africa, but a promotion and reenlistment saved him from going and his orders were switched to going to Naval Air Station Memphis's hospital. One would think that being stationed in Memphis, Tennessee that Henard would have an easy way to get home to Lewisburg, Tennessee. Not true, the trains and buses did not make the commute home possible. It was more hassle than it was worth. Vivien clamored to be with Henard in Memphis, but he didn't think he would be there long enough to bother moving them. He was there for 7 months as a medical personnel officer then he was ordered back to Brooklyn of all places. And you can guess that Vivien was eager to leave Lewisburg and go back to Brooklyn.

He worked at the Naval Medical Supply Depot in Brooklyn and as he was doing that, he was helping the Navy by assembling a field hospital. He had no idea where he was going for the longest as they were waiting to be deployed. They transported the supplies by train across America to California around September of 1944. They were sent to Samar, Philippines and Henard was forbidden to tell Vivien due to the censors. Looks like they were in the Philippines at Field Hospital #114 around January 1945 and went through two typhoons while there. The hospital took in a few patients, but it was so close to the end of the war, that it really didn't see the worst of the war, but the most serious patients they had were the survivors from the USS Indianapolis some of whom were floating in the ocean for five days before rescued and the ones that didn't make it were eaten by sharks. September of 1945 Henard gets a promotion to Lt. (jg), and should be one of the first to head home. That didn't happen, since he was a personnel officer sending the boys home, he couldn't go home until they were gone.

He was given a retirement party before he left the Philippines and landed in the states about January 1946, but before he can go home he has a big steak dinner in New Orleans, then proceeded to the Memphis Naval Hospital to have a painful tooth repaired that had broke off in his gum back in the Philippines.

Henard went on to serve 8 years in the Navy reserves, and when he first returned to Lewisburg he worked at a furniture store on the courthouse square. Next, he was hired to run Lewisburg's new water treatment plant they just built. He was qualified for the job because of his laboratory, chemistry, medical and pharmacy experience in the Navy. He later switched to be the county's building code inspector. His hobby at home was working in his shop and refinishing antique furniture. A year after Vivien died he married Nannie Elizabeth "Lib" Bellamy Cochran (September 24, 1919) and she is still alive. My Grandmother, Mother, brother and I have a house full of nice antique furniture that my grandfather Henard lovingly restored.

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