Date : Sun, 25 Jul 2004 19:56:36 -0400
Subject : Re: Memories of FB PARKS people.
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Hi Sam,
Yeah, It's OK with me to place any of my pictures in the website....but,
ponder this: I have a "fist-full" of pictures that you might like to have--
all pertaining to FB PARKS experiences. I sent them to Paul Trejo
sometime ago; he used them and returned them to me. They will be sent
to you via snail mail if you like. I have a good pix of "Caledonia", the
little dog who was the Floyd B. Parks' mascot at one time. Say yeah and
I'll send them to you.
Cheers!
bp

From: "Robert Perdue" <BobyPrudia@msn.com> Save Address | Headers
To : "Lou" <wdewitt@lowcountry.com>,"sam" <sam@star77.com>
CC :
Date : Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:00:04 -0400
Subject : Photo Attached
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Hi Lou & Sam,
Attached is an early pix of me, made in early winter 1943,
about four months after boot-camp. My basic training was
done at Sampson,New York on Lake Geneva. July 1,1943 to
the end of August.

Cheers,
bp

From: "Robert Perdue" <BobyPrudia@msn.com> Save Address | Headers
To : "Lou" <wdewitt@lowcountry.com>,"sam" <sam@star77.com>
CC :
Date : Mon, 26 Jul 2004 15:59:07 -0400
Subject : Our golden years...
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Hey Lou & Sam,
Lou, when you called me today and we talked
some mention was made of our advancing age;
well, any member of the Parks commissioning
crew would have been about 20-years old then,
so, he must be crowding 80 now. I will reach 80
on April 21, 2005 and my Miss Prudia will reach
it on September 2, 2004. So, there---1945 was my
20th. year.

I do a dab of writing as a hobby. Here below is
a sample of my stuff. Maybe you'll enjoy it.
bp

Hi Lou and Sam,

Here below is a print of a party which happened in Pensacola, Florida on Navy Day, October 27, 1945. Reading left-to-right:
Joel E. Hill of Midlothian, Va.
Robert C. Perdue of Roanoke,Va.
R.E.Fish of Massachusetts--I don't remember Fish's first name
or his home town.
Alfred J.H.Winter of Pipestone, Minnesota

These four vagrants all are electricians on the DD-884.

bp & Ms. Prudia

Hi Lou, and Sam;
I received a package from Robbie today. It contained
a cap, three place mats from three reunions, a candy
bar, and two pieces of Floyd B. Parks jewelry.

I donned the cap and Miss Prudia brought out her
digital camera. Just look at the result; It's not easy
to believe that a man can appear so outworn at a
mere seventy-nine, but pictures don't lie--I'm told.

So, for better or worse, here it is.
bp

Sam & Lou,
Photo equipment & photo quality in the late 1940s
was not what it is now; you probably suspected that.
However, I'm sending a scan of three small
B&W photos---I hope you can "make them out".

Hello Sam,
I did look in on your website. "Twas very good, 'bout me, that is.
Later it occurred to me that some autobiography might be useful
to you in your quest for info.

I left the Parks in Hong Kong, as you know already, and finished
a trip around the world in another ship's company. We eventually
arrived in the navy yard at Charleston, SC, and tied up at the same
berth that the Parks had left some months before.

Times were hard in the world of employment for returning veterans,
so I returned to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in August of that year,
1946 and was reinstated in the job I left when I was inducted into the
navy. I continued there until September 1948 when I matriculated at
Roanoke College, a private liberal arts institution where I enrolled in
a pre-engineering program under the original GI Bill Of Rights.

I did not graduate there, but served three years: 1948-1949; 1949-1950;
and 1950-1951, then transferred to Virginia Polytechnic Institute where
I eventually graduated with a BSEE with the class of 1955. Thus I rose
from an EM2c to an electrical engineer and was employed, entirely in
heavy industry--usually with the title of plant engineer where the
primary purpose was to maintain production equipment capable of
doing its duty.

That employment took me "on the road" . I continued in the engineering
arena from 1955 to the time of my retirement in October 1989.

The hardest work I've ever done is being retired; '"taint normal and
'taint satisfying".

So there's my story briefly put.

Signed: Robert Carlyle Perdue

more photos

my poetry