[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18780-18781]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 TRIBUTE TO A PATRIOT, HARLAN MEREDITH

 Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I rise today in recognition of Mr. 
Harlan Meredith, a resident of Tuscaloosa, a Navy hero, and a leader in 
our community. Over the Independence Day holiday, a friend of mine, 
Charlie Land, read the following tribute about Mr. Meredith. I ask that 
Charlie's comments be printed in the Record in celebration of Harlan 
Meredith.
  The material follows:

       Once upon a time a young man of this church, freshly 
     graduated from the University of Alabama, faced the world and 
     pondered the future. I know that doesn't sound like a big 
     deal. New college graduates are always doing that. No doubt 
     some are right now.
       But this was a special time. It was May of 1941. He was 20 
     years old and war loomed uncertainly on the horizon.
       He already had tried to get into military service through 
     the University's advanced Army or Army Air Corps ROTC 
     programs. Both had turned him down. Something always seemed 
     to be wrong when he took the required physical examinations, 
     although nothing ever showed up in his regular physicals. ``I 
     guess the Lord was just looking after me,'' he would muse 
     many years later. ``I figure He just didn't want me to be in 
     those.''
       Within a few months, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. 
     War wasn't just on the horizon anymore.
       He really had always wanted to serve in the U.S. Navy, 
     anyhow. He applied for a direct commission as a naval officer 
     and was accepted. He was ready to go fight for his country, 
     for freedom.
       But the Navy sent its new ensign to Chicago to oversee the 
     hydrographic office that served the Great Lakes. It was not 
     an unimportant job and he did it well. His commanding officer 
     in Detroit was pleased. He pronounced his ensign a lucky 
     young man; he could hydrograph his way through the whole war 
     right there in Chicago. He liked Chicago okay, but that 
     wasn't at all where he wanted to be or what he wanted to do. 
     He wanted to go to sea and fight. It took a while, and he had 
     to find his own replacement, but finally he was off to San 
     Francisco to train for sea duty.

[[Page 18781]]

       Now he was 21, but he was still single, his wife-to-be yet 
     unmet. And he was all steamed up to go to the South Pacific.
       ``You know how you are at that age,'' he says.
       He got there, although in a sort of roundabout way. His 
     first sea duty was on the seaplane tender Hulbert, a 
     converted destroyer, in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. It 
     was no pleasure cruise. The Aleutians were hostile waters; 
     Japanese forces occupied some of the islands. There was 
     combat, although not the heavy action to be found in the 
     South Pacific. One night the Hulbert dragged anchor off a 
     point in the Aleutians, ran aground and sank.
       He transferred to a small new escort aircraft carrier based 
     in Portland, OR. Typical of her class, the ship was named for 
     a bay. Her namesake, Kalinin Bay, was in Southeast Alaska. 
     But she would take her new gunnery officer from Tuscaloosa to 
     the South Pacific at last.
       And there would be some action.
       The Kalinin Bay, with her 27 aircraft and 860 crew members, 
     sailed about the South Pacific, doing her chores. A lot of 
     them involved combat. There were enemy air attacks to fend 
     off. There was the occasional torpedo to dodge. There were 
     air strikes to be made. There were invasions to support-
     Sapan, Guam, the Southern Palaus, islands in the Leyte Gulf 
     and finally the invasion of Leyte itself as Gen. Douglas 
     MacArthur made good on his promise to return to the 
     Philippines.
       So the Kalinin Bay was no stranger to combat as she steamed 
     some 60 miles east of the Philippine Island of Samar early on 
     the morning of October 25, 1944. She already had operated off 
     Leyte for more than a week. Her planes already had flown 244 
     sorties, destroying enemy installations and airfields on five 
     different islands.
       She was part of a small naval battle group nicknamed 
     ``Taffy 3.'' It included 5 other escort carriers, plus a 
     screen of 3 destroyers and 4 destroyer escorts. The carriers 
     of ``Taffy 3'' were preparing to launch their first air 
     strikes of the day when its commanding admiral learned that a 
     sizable Japanese naval force was approaching. It was 0647 
     hours.
       By 0658 hours, ``Taffy 3'' was under fire from part of the 
     largest Japanese surface fleet to fight since the Battle of 
     Midway, coming to keep the Americans out of the Philippines.
       The ``Battle Off Samar'', as it would be called, was under 
     way. It would be described by historians as one of the most 
     memorable engagements in U.S. naval history.
       The ships of ``Taffy 3'', slower, outnumbered and 
     outgunned, soon were fighting for their lives against a force 
     of four Japanese battleships, eight cruisers and 12 
     destroyers. The Kalinin Bay took the first of 15 direct hits 
     at 0750 hours, a 14- or 16-inch shell from one of the 
     battleships. It struck one side of the hangar deck near the 
     forward elevator. A later hit penetrated the deck and 
     destroyed all of the ship's radio and radar equipment.
       Fortunately, some of the shells went right through the ship 
     without causing significant damage. And even more 
     fortunately, there were a great many near misses. The Kalinin 
     Bay fought back hard. She launched her aircraft while under 
     fire from three cruisers. She dodged behind a timely rain 
     squall, then maneuvered behind chemical smoke. She traded 
     fire with the cruisers for a while, then shot it out with 
     Japan's Destroyer Squadron 10.
       Her 5-inch gun stayed busy. It scored two hits on one heavy 
     cruiser and hit a Japanese destroyer amidships. And her 
     planes inflicted heavy damage, striking the enemy ships with 
     bombs, rockets and gunfire.
       The Japanese naval vessels turned away for ``Taffy 3'' 
     after 2\1/2\ hours, but not before their destroyers launched 
     a torpedo attack. The torpedoes were launched from far enough 
     away to begin to slow before reaching their targets. So a 
     U.S. Avenger torpedo- bomber from a sister ship was able to 
     explode two torpedoes in the Kalinin Bay's wake about 100 
     yards astern, and the ship's 5-inch gun deflected another 
     from a collision course with her stern.
       Battered and bloody, the U.S. force sailed south, but there 
     still would be little respite for the Kalinin Bay and her 
     surviving sister ships. Little more than an hour later, at 
     1050, they came under concentrated attack from kamikaze 
     aircraft, the suicide bombers of World War II. Four kamikazes 
     dived at the Kalinin Bay. Two of the airplanes were shot down 
     at close range. The third crashed into one side of the flight 
     deck, damaging it badly. The fourth destroyed the aft port 
     stack.
       It was finally over by 1130 hours. The ships and planes of 
     ``Taffy 3,'' with some help from the planes of another unit, 
     ``Taffy 2'', had cleared the air of enemy planes and had 
     denied the powerful Japanese force entry into the Gulf of 
     Leyte.
       MacArthur's beachhead was safe.
       The price had been high. Five of ``Taffy 3's'' 13 ships had 
     been sunk--two carriers, a destroyer and two destroyer 
     escorts. Hundreds of American sailors had died. The Kalinin 
     Bay counted five dead among her 60 casualties, plus 
     considerable structural damage.
       During the hours of intense, furious fighting, the gunnery 
     officer of the Kalinin Bay never wished he was back in that 
     office in Chicago.
       The Kalinin Bay managed to make it to New Guinea for 
     temporary repairs. The ship was back in the States by late 
     November and he transferred off as it awaited further work. 
     Shipmates had died in several battles. He had been frightened 
     at times and his faith in God had been tested. But he had 
     come through without a scratch and with his faith stronger 
     than ever.
       ``You realized your Christian faith was the most important 
     thing you could have,'' he would say. ``In combat I felt like 
     I was sent there for a purpose. I felt like God's hand was 
     holding me the whole time; I really did.''
       He was ready for his next assignment.
       It was to the Midway, a much larger aircraft carrier that 
     soon was to be commissioned at Newport News, VA. The idea was 
     for the Midway to sail around the Horn and into the Pacific, 
     where it would be a powerful additional force. By the time 
     the Midway was commissioned September 10, 1945, that 
     assignment was unnecessary. Gen. MacArthur had accepted 
     Japan's unconditional surrender on September 2 aboard the 
     Battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The war was over.
       The Midway would have a lasting impact on his life, though. 
     A fellow naval officer needed tickets to the commissioning 
     ceremony for house guests, and he was glad to oblige. Among 
     the guests he met the lovely young woman from Tuscaloosa who 
     would become his wife.
       They married shortly after he got out of the Navy. Duty 
     done and a bit older, the young man who had loved his country 
     so much that he was determined to fight for it turned his 
     attention to a successful business career, helped raise two 
     beautiful daughters, and became a highly respected community 
     leader.
       He became a stalwart of this church, a wise, practical 
     leader who has given of himself, grown and thrived on his 
     ability to seek and receive more insights. His faith has been 
     unwavering, even during the painful ordeal of one daughter's 
     untimely death.
       People who know him will tell you he is a man of high 
     intelligence, great character, impeccable integrity, calm 
     consistency and complete credibility. They will also tell you 
     he is hard-working, caring, considerate, loyal and a Southern 
     gentleman in the best sense of that definition.
       He's a man who still greatly loves his family and his 
     hometown and the United States of America and what it stands 
     for, what he fought for.
       A patriot.
       A man who reminds us in his modest, unassuming way that 
     patriotism isn't some mysterious, exotic condition. It is 
     simple and fundamental and powerful. It springs from fervent 
     love for your country, love for freedom. It is in your heart 
     and spirit and actions, just like it always has been in his.
       This sanctuary hasn't lacked for patriots and heroes to sit 
     in its pews to worship God over the decades. Many who fit 
     that description are here today, as you are most Sundays.
       I salute you. And I salute Harlan Meredith, whose story I'm 
     sure some of you recognized. I also thank him for his 
     graciousness in sharing it with me, at my request, so I could 
     share it with you today.
       Incidentally, Harlan and Mary Anne have been married for 57 
     years now. That's worth a salute, too. Our church, community 
     and country has been blessed to have people like Harlan, and 
     you.
       This, too, is a special time in our country's history. 
     Again we are at war. Almost every day more of our soldiers 
     pay the ultimate price for our country, leaving saddened 
     survivors to live with the aftermath. It makes this 
     Independence Day weekend all the more meaningful. I pray it 
     also makes us all the more thankful for our blessings.
       And the United States of America truly has been blessed 
     these 227 years, perhaps most of all with the courageous, 
     hard-working, God-loving people who have built and maintained 
     this great country of liberty and justice. People who have 
     been willing to sacrifice and fight for it, as so many 
     continue to do today. Patriots.
       We aren't perfect as a country. But to the extent mere 
     humankind can be, the good part of the United States of 
     America is both the light and the hope of the world. May God 
     bless you; may God continue to bless America; and may we 
     never forget from Whom our blessings flow.
       I don't think Harlan Meredith ever has.

                          ____________________