LIBRARIAN
USS YUMA ATF 94

Our ship had a nice library, a bookshelf about 30” by 48” in size maybe holding 50 books was my guess. We had a lot of books that were obviously donated by people and the Readers Digest sent us a package of paper back condensed books each month or so.

The library had a lock on it to secure the doors and I got myself appointed volunteer librarian in order to get ready access to the library any time I wanted. The Yeoman was happy to turn over this duty to me.

I had never gone to High School. I saw all the educated men getting sent back to the states for more schooling. All of the Officers had college degrees except the retired men that had been pulled back into the war.

I decided that if I could read a book each day on average, I could get a good self-education in this method. I am sure that I did not adhere to my plan of a gook each day but I read a lot of books. When we weren't sailing, I read all the time. It was better than playing cribbage and hearts. When I got my work done, I was reading. I became a real book -worm.

I started at the top shelf and read the next book in order alphabetically. Only if I read everything could I get a broad education. I could not be selective and read only what I wanted to.

Some of the books that contained a lot of foreign terms and words I could not always understand but I read them anyway. Sometimes I got some help from other shipmates that could speak French and Spanish, etc.

When I had read the entire library, I found I could solve the problem by swapping libraries with other ships of a similar size. Invariably, I found, they had different books because their books originated from different volunteer contributions than ours. I would send over a signal that would say something like, “Trade you libraries, sight unseen except classics. (I always wanted to keep Shakespeare and the Bible- both of which I never got around to reading by a couple of reasons. I couldn’t understand either but the other guys wanted to hang on to them.

I read a lot of books and got a good, board education through my reading. I have never regretted it.

When I got home, I found that if I took and passed the GED (General Education Development) test, I would get what amounted a high school diploma and I could go on to college. That is what I did. It was very easy because it was essentially a reading test.