August 22, 1995

The little man's hair was white; his badge black and silver; and his look skeptical. "What did you say you wanted to see?" He leaned back in his chair behind the information booth.

I had already told him that I had been to the Aerospace Museum yesterday with my family. I had told him that I had read about a serviceman at one of the exhibits, and wanted only to go back and copy down his name.

He probably thought that I was somebody intent on cheating the museum out of the entrance fee. Maybe he just wanted to know what had so interested me, so I blundered on... "Back around that side," I gestured to the left side of the circular building, "just before the Yorktown scan-mural. There was a display about the beginning of America's involvement in World War II."

I blathered a little longer, and the little man stood up and walked away. For a moment, I thought that I had failed. Perhaps I should have asked the security guard at the entrance. Or maybe the lady in the ticket booth, whose job it would have been to squeeze some more money out of me. Damn! All I wanted was a couple of minutes.

Then I noticed that the man was walking towards the exit turnstile. I followed him, hoping. He opened the gate next to the turnstile and said, "You can probably find it from here." I thanked him and hurried into the museum proper.

I jogged through the exhibits, working my way backwards in time. I passed the space program, aircraft carrier memorabilia, and reached the display card. I looked down in the lower left corner, but was shocked to find a completely different story. I had the wrong card. So I went further and further back, almost giving in to despair. That's when I found the correct card and the name I wanted to note down: Doris Miller.

Although the name sounds effeminate, Doris Miller looked to be a large and strong man. Maybe the name got him picked on when he was a kid, because Doris grew into a fighter. While in the service, he earned the title of the heavyweight boxing champion of the Pacific Fleet. With the logic endemic to the armed services, the Navy decided to make him a mess hall attendant and assigned him to the battleship West Virginia.

In those days, if the Navy decided that you would make a good mess attendant, that's what you stayed. And they certainly didn't waste time or money training a mess attendant for any higher purpose. Then came December 7, 1941. West Virginia was manned by a skeleton crew, in the port at Pearl Harbor. I suppose that all of the "useful" sailors were on leave, so when the Japanese attack started, all kinds of people on board ship were pressed into emergency duty. Even a glorified Navy busboy. Doris Miller was recruited to help with the antiaircraft guns on the signal bridge.

That could have been the end of it: a mess attendant doing some grunt work in a gunnery turret. Until the gunner got wounded. That's when Doris Miller took over the antiaircraft gun. For an untrained man, he did rather well, shooting down two enemy planes. He probably shot down two more, but those were never confirmed.

Doris Miller was presented with the Navy Cross for his heroic action. Admiral Chester Nimitz himself pinned on that medal on May 27, 1942 aboard the carrier Enterprise. A long line of heroes were decorated that day. Doris Miller was at the end of the line.

Miller died on November 24, 1943, when his ship was torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-175. Accept no substitutes: Doris Miller was a genuine hero.

I finished scribbling down the bare facts about Miller and then stuffed the little yellow note pad in my pocket. I scurried for the exit. On my way past the information booth, I stopped to repeat my thanks, but the man who had helped me had already left for lunch.

I left the building and noticed a short man with white hair heading for the hot dog cart on the edge of the parking lot. I trotted after him, throwing an "excuse me" at him when I got close enough. He turned around and I was relieved to see that I had the right fellow. I thanked him again and he smiled at me, made some "you're welcome" noises, and turned back in pursuit of his lunch.

My last duty discharged, I leaned against a lamp pole and waited for Diana to finish another loop of the parking lot and pick me up. So I stood there, thinking about Doris Miller and what little I knew about his life and death.

I couldn't help but wonder how many people, in those backwards days of fifty years ago and even today, when we are supposed to be more enlightened, would have looked at Doris Miller, genuine hero, and considered him to be just another dumb nigger.

- Dennis Griesser

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