Vet honored for lessons in war

The U.S. Navy educated Jerry Ives.

Growing up in Spokane he’d never even crossed the Cascades, but after training for World War II at Farragut Naval Base Ives embarked on a Pacific Ocean voyage from Bremerton to Guam, the Philippines and Saipan.

“I picked up more geography in six months than I did my whole time in school,” said Ives.

Now, 63 years later, that education at sea is earning Ives his high school diploma.

Friends and family will gather Saturday for a special ceremony at Creston High School to celebrate the achievement and Ives’ upcoming 80th birthday.

Ives left school after junior high and joined the Navy in 1943 at the tender age of 17. He preferred the idea of life at sea to battling in the trenches as a soldier.

As a left-hand loader on a battleship’s 20 mm gun, though, the lessons were often hard.

Prompted by his wife Verla and daughter Annette Marz, Ives recently recounted his experiences.

His first task after training was to clean up the battered USS California, which had been docked in Bremerton after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“You could still smell the stench of death,” Ives said of the experience.

Ives remembers waking up the morning of a battle in the Philippines to see American ships stretching out to the horizon. He recalls sailors plying the sea to recover the bodies of American seamen.

Ives narrowly survived a Japanese kamikaze attack after being knocked under a 40 mm gun, which protected him from the ensuing fireball.

And Ives remembers when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan: “First we felt it. We felt funny, at least I did. We knew something was going on, but we didn’t know what.”

But it wasn’t all seriousness. Ives’ memories also include the hijinks that accompanied crossing the equator, drinking gallons of coffee and surreptitiously snacking on “misplaced” fruit cocktail.

After returning from the war, Ives married twice and had eight kids and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

He worked various jobs, including as a janitor at the Crescent department store and crane operator for Pacific Northwest Alloys.

His children graduated from Creston High School when he was working at a sawmill there.

That connection is why his diploma will come from Creston, which has granted a diploma to one other World War II veteran.

“It’s nice that we can do this. Honoring veterans is close to my heart, with both my father and father-in-law serving in World War II,” said Creston School District Secretary Connie Reed.

Ives said he never needed a diploma to earn a living, and he didn’t seek it out until his children arranged it for him. So he doesn’t want people to make too much of a fuss at the celebration Saturday.

As a man whose motto is “No, you go ahead. I’m in no hurry,” a diploma at 79 is a diploma in plenty of time.