In November, 1995, I went with my United Church of Christ, (a mainline denomination) pastor husband, David Venator, to Pearl Harbor as part of our 30th wedding anniversary.

He remembered that he was almost 10 on that late Sunday afternoon of December 7th. His father was listening to a football game while shaving before going to work on the night shift. Upon hearing the announcer break in with the bombing news, Dave ran to get his toy gun so he could protect his mother when the Japanese soldiers would invade their street in Ramsey, New Jersey.

Being there standing above the Arizona was a significant experience for him. He had long served a church in Massachusetts' highest crime zip code and along the way had developed some psychic ability that always surprised him.

My husband stood looking down and found himself mentally going down into the wreck. His mind came upon a young sailor standing straight before a wall of pipes. Mentally he asked, "What's your name, sailor?"
He vaguely heard a reply, "Wally Tis."
"You're relieved of duty, sailor" Dave mentally said to him.
The figure disappeared.

I was used to watching my husband's eyes shift when his consciousness shifted, so I waited for him to come back. He was shaken by the experience and doubted its validity.

I pointed to the records building nearby and knew we could rule out any tricks of imagination. We spoke to the woman guide and asked if there had been a Wally Tis-something on the Arizona. She went to a drawer below and to the right of the wall of names, opened one labeled "T". She found a Walter Tisdale, WT. WT stood for Water Tender.

Wow! We never knew what to do with that encounter. I finally wrote it up and sent it to FATE magazine sometime after Dave died in 1999. It was published. Only now I think it might be of interest to a greater audience, especially of Veterans or their descendants.

Margaret Venator