Interesting Obituary

My niece, Stephanie, is helping with a group of Navy divers today in Virginia and her comments about their antics brought this old obituary to mind.

This is an obit that I ran across some years ago returning from Key West, FL. I picked up a KW paper in the tiny airport there to read on the flight home and saw this. I love to read obits that really let you wrap your arms around the person that died and this one certainly does that. He must have been a character you wouldn't soon forget. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

James Wesley Ferguson

Cap'n Jim died at home in his own bed, peacefully, a way he never thought he would go. He'd always thought his death might be violent and the bed not his own.

Jim crowded much into one 73 year life. He learned to swim in Tahiti while on a cruise in his uncle's schooner, almost before he could walk. He met his family in Scotland before he became old enough to go to school. He grew up in Coral Gables and spent his high school years in Knoxville, Tenn.

After playing lots of football and being carried off the field more times than he walked, he graduated from the architecture school at the University of Tennessee.

Jim enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He fought in World War II, mostly in the South Pacific, not at a desk of course, but on the sea and in the jungles. He was a various times a Seabee, a hardhat diver, an engineer, a POW, and an explosive-mine diffuser. A member of one of the first two frogmen units, he helped write the book for the Navy Seals.

He was shot and stabbed, bombed, bludgeoned and bayoneted, shrapnelled, torpedoed, and sunk. Admiral "Bull" Halsey pinned a silver star on him for bravery. He was chosen for duty aboard the USS Williamsburg, President Truman's yacht, serving under oath to protect the president's life with his own. He also had the privilege of doing private investigative work for President Truman in Korea. He left the Navy a captain.

He was a ship captain in the Merchant Marine, the owner of a furniture-making business in Miami, a bar owner in Houston. He blew a mean jazz sax and shot moneymaking craps. He was a good woodcarver, songwriter and sculptor with a creative and inventive mind.

He was good at children, too! Linda Brown of High Point, FL., Wesley Nairn of Labelle, FL., Kristy Ferguson of Denver, Colo., and Karen Ferguson of Corpus Christi, TX., are the the much-loved issue of two of his marriages. Equally loved are children in China, the Marshall Islands, and Australia from less formal liaisons.

Jim died of lung cancer. If his friends feel they'd like to do something in his memory, perhaps they could help the smokers they love kick the habit.

He is survived by his children and grandchildren, and also by his widow, Marilyn, who will always be grateful to have found someone to laugh with.

Jim's body will be returned to the sea on Sept. 17, 1996.