Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [90]
Edith had indeed heard something. But as word of the sinking of the Houston began to make headlines, the March 4 message from her husband was her talisman against the dark reality pressing down around her. It was a miracle of miracles. He was alive. When the Navy Department’s “We regret to inform you” notice arrived on March 14, the day of her son’s inquiry, informing her that her husband was missing following action against the enemy, she could dismiss it as a mistake, a bureaucrat being overzealous with the boilerplate.
The Houston was lost but her husband was fine, and she was so very proud of her older son. Nineteen-year-old Harold was busy with a naval reserve officer curriculum that would propel him in his father’s path. Edith applauded his ambition. Her March 18 letter to Admiral Hart was, as Hart told her in reply, “characteristic of you in having no hesitation about your son carrying on in his father’s footsteps.” The Rooks family was fully vested in this war. And Hart was not giving up on the skipper of the Houston. He wrote Edith on March 25, “I, myself, am by no means without hope of seeing Rooks in the flesh again. It is quite true that we may not hear from him for a long time, since he may be a prisoner of war. But the experiences of ships sinking in action in that warm water is that there are many survivors in most of the cases. You see, water is warm, not rough, and men can endure until they are picked up.”
A few weeks later, the Secretary of the Navy put a sharp dent in Edith’s hopes, elaborating on the Western Union telegram.
It is with deep regret that I confirm the Navy Department’s dispatch informing you that your husband, Captain Albert Harold Rooks, United States Navy, is missing following action in the service of his country.
The meager report received shows that the vessel to which he was attached has been reported missing and must be presumed to be lost. As you know, battle conditions delay communications, and it may be months before we have definite information. However, as soon as further details as to his status are received, you will be notified.…
As a recent law has been passed providing for continuing payment of salary and certain allotments for missing officers, it is suggested that you communicate with the Navy Department concerning allotments that may lapse.
I desire to express to you my deepest sympathy in your anxiety.
For a few months her only source of news, and the only theater for her despair, was private correspondence. In late April, Edith received a letter from a Navy captain named J. W. Woodruff saying that the mother of Houston aviator Lt. John B. Stivers “had word from a most responsible source” that Captain Rooks was a prisoner of war in Formosa. No vague blandishment from the Secretary of the Navy could wash away the hope that grew from these heartening nuggets.
In a May 21 encomium to her husband, Admiral Glassford described him as “a tower of strength in getting our scattered forces together, providing safe conduct for hundreds of merchant ships escaping to the southward out of the fighting area to the north, and in planning not only our operations…but for our operations against the enemy…. It would be difficult for me to tell you how I relied on your husband’s advice to me during those days. So much so that I had determined quite definitely after I relieved Admiral Hart to get Captain Rooks out of his ship at the first opportunity and attach him to my staff as the Deputy Chief of Staff. He never knew of this…. I needed just such a man.”
Years of activism by William A. Bernrieder and other Houston civic leaders to name CA-30