Susan Edens
For The New Era
?Please excuse the mess,? said Ralph Martin 78, as he wove his way through an obstacle course of cardboard boxes, clothing, and linens that covered his living room floor.
Martin explained that he was trying to sort through the personal possessions of his lifetime buddy, Paul Hanneson, who had died the previous week. Hanneson?s daughter had asked Martin to perform one last favor for his friend and clean out his house, so she could get the house ready to sell and get back to her family out of state.
Martin and Hanneson had been friends since childhood, when they both grew up together in the Los Angeles area. They joined different branches of the service a year apart, Paul the Coast Guard in 1943, and Ralph the Navy in 1944. Martin held up a picture from the box closest to him that showed Paul in his Coast Guard uniform.
?Back then, they made us all go take a picture and send it back home to the folks,? Martin said. ?If you are going to do a story about veterans, you ought to include Paul ? he was a mighty good man.?
Martin joined the Navy at 17 and became part of the Amphibious Force Landing Craft Support on the LCS-L3 69 that shelled the beach as the Marines were landing.
?We were throwing rockets and shelling pretty hard with 40 mm (guns) at Okinawa.? Martin recalled. The whole group dodged suicide planes for six weeks, but Martin?s ship only took one indirect hit. The kamikaze was hit by the ship?s guns during its descent and as it came down it just glanced off the side of the ship taking the flag supports with it as it fell into the sea. He said that after the island was secured, his ship and crew went to the Philippines to stock up on ammunition for the planned invasion of southern Japan. They were about halfway to their destination when word came that the atomic bomb had been dropped, so the 158-foot ship changed course and headed for Tokyo Bay.
After the war officially ended, many of Martin?s crew were sent back home including all of the cooks on board. So Martin and another crew member were chosen to cook for the 72-man crew.
?I didn?t know a thing about cooking then, but under those circumstances you learn fast.? Martin said with a laugh , ?Didn?t lose a man. so it must have been OK.?
Martin spent a year in China following the war, hauling supplies for the 1st Marine Service Division. He hauled a load of soybean flour up the Yangtze River before the communists deposed Chiang Kai-Shek.
He said the Chinese let the American ship pass through almost at once, but there was an English ship that had been there a year already waiting to go through. During liberty with the English soldiers he found out that every time their ship tried to go past a certain point the Chinese would fire on them from high cliffs on both sides of the passage, He later learned that it was another year before the British ship was allowed to pass through.
Although he once was ?machined-gunned? out of his small craft once came under machine-gun fire, Martin?s only hospital stay came when he had an emergency appendix operation in China at the Tinsen Marine Field Hospital.
After China, Martin spent a year with the Navy Air Corps out of Honolulu driving gas trucks to refuel planes for the Night Fighter Squadron. He said he enjoyed that work so much he almost reenlisted, but was too slow filling out the paperwork and was discharged in January of 1948.
Shortly after his discharge, while still wearing his uniform, he captured the heart of a girl named Joyce and they were married two weeks after they met. They have now been married for 57 years, have three children ? two sons, Dick and John and a daughter Lari Jo ? and six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
?He was a very handsome and very persuasive man,? Joyce said about her husband, as she helped sort through Hanneson?s effects.
Martin spent the next 38 years as a longshoreman on the waterfront in Los Angeles, operating a crane and working cargo .
His fascination with planes, which started in the service, caught up to him again later in life and he owned and operated five aircraft between 1970 and 1982. Before the planes it was motorcycles that held his attention and he professionally raced BSAs and an occasional Harley Davidson in Los Angeles, twice entering the Catalina Grand Prix.
While waiting between races one time, Martin heard a man playing a banjo and knew immediately that was something he wanted to pursue. So, when what was supposed to be three-week vacation to Alaska became a year- long stay after the Martins fell in love with the place, he bought a banjo and taught himself to play.
His love affair with the banjo has lasted almost as long as his marriage and upon returning to Los Angeles after the stay in Alaska he joined the Southern California Banjo Band , which at one time boasted 103 members. Martin was playing in a VFW Hall in the Los Angles area in 1978 when his friend Hanneson walked through the door. Although Martin hadn?t seen him for 35 years, he knew him instantly. ??No,? and then added, ?But I?ll bet you could play it and more on your harmonica.?
Hanneson then recognized Martin and the two quickly caught up with each others lives. Martin, now has Hanneson?s harmonica displayed along with his own trophies and plaques he has accumulated for his banjo prowess. Prominent among the awards is one Martin rceived when he was inducted into the National Four-String Banjo Hall of Fame on May 22, 2003 in a ceremony held in Guthrey, Okla.
A few years after his retirement from his longshoreman?s job, Martin moved to Sweet Home in 1992 after his friend Hanneson had already come up this way and scouted it out for him. He?s traded in the planes and motorcycles for ground transportation, traveling extensively with Joyce in their motor home. The pair have toured the Civil War battlefields twice and show no signs of slowing down.
Martin started an annual Banjo Camp in Sweet Home in 1998 and each summer more than 200 pickers and strummers gather on his property to play and learn.
Martin said he never took lessons for banjo or much of anything else.
?Everything I?ve done, I?ve taught myself, don?t let anybody tell me what to do?I?ll figure it out eventually,? he stated with a hearty laugh.
? He wouldn?t listen, anyway,? Joyce adds with a mischievous twinkle.