[Milsurplus] Frank W. King, 100 Years Birthday

[Hubert Miller]

October 7 i attended a public celebration and 100th birthday party for Frank King, a WWII Marine. Celebration was held in Lincoln City, Oregon, Community Center, and it looked to me the attendance was at least 150+. The fellow sitting to Frank's left, i don't know his connection, but he gave a wonderful encomium, laced with a gentle humor, of Frank's varied career. I got to talk with Frank briefly afterward. I went out and bought Frank's autobiography, "From the Sweet Cherry Ranch". Frank was a ground radio operator at Guadalcanal, living there, as he said, in a hole in the ground, on two meals a day. He was returned to the States to recover from malaria, and on his recovery, he found that his Marine Corps service records were lost. So he used this opportunity to get into something that appealed more to his idea of a real frontlines combat role: he stated that he was a Marine aviation radioman - gunner. So next stop, he actually was in the rear seat of an SBD  flying out of Peleliu, Okinawa, and Ie Shima.
His book is a very candid look at his life from childhood, travelling in the 1920s from Minnesota to California - this before a Route 66 was even thought of, to his varied communications and writing jobs, to his eventual happiness at settling into a role he really loved: independent journalist writing for a variety of magazines and newspapers.
Something else i had never expected: i learned he had been from high school days a heavy drinker, which later blossomed into being a high-functioning full alcoholic in his adult years. He doesn't spare himself when he recounts the hiding, the excuses he made, and the harm he did. He conquered this addiction in his middle age years with the help of AA and a return to the faith he was raised in.
Frank King is also AA7AX, but i don't know how radio - active he is today. Another local ham i know, Joe Joncas, NJ7OK, told me Frank had been his mentor into ham radio a couple dacades back.
-Hue Miller, K7HUE
Newport, Oregon


Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
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