Isn’t that a cute kid? I’m inclined to think so, because the kid is me. I’m 2 years old in the photo, sailing the high seas aboard the fastest ocean liner ever built.
That family trip, nearly 60 years ago, helps explain why I find myself writing about the very last journey of that ship, the S.S. United States. On Wednesday, it was intentionally sent to the bottom of the ocean near Destin, Fla., to become an artificial reef and diving destination.
I’m in Destin and watched the ship’s final moments.
For the past two decades or so, I’ve written off and on about the ship and the efforts to save it. I got interested for a simple reason: that family trip.
I don’t remember a thing about it, of course. I was 2.
But through my childhood, it made for great family lore. Mom and Dad would reminisce about the time we moved across the Atlantic with our entire lives stuffed into a single steamer trunk.
My dad had gotten a scholarship in London and the price of tickets was covered, either by air or by sea. The choice was easy, my mom, Maureen O’Hara Pesta, told me this week. “We wanted to ride the big ship,” she said. It sounded like an adventure.
The S.S. United States, fast and luxurious, carried passengers back and forth between New York and Europe for most of the 1950s and ’60s. My parents made the right decision in 1968 to go by sea — barely a year later, the liner went out of service, never to sail again.
Source: www.nytimes.com
