Brooksville Vet Returns To His Past

BROOKSVILLE - Even as a boy, George Wootten wanted to visit the land down under.

He got close enough during his Navy service in the Pacific to pick up the unofficial Australian anthem "Waltzing Matilda" on his short wave radio.

But it took him another 50 years or so before he got a chance to see a kangaroo in the wild. By the time he boarded a plane this year, there was something far more precious he wanted to see in Australia.

At 87, Wootten has lived a full life. He retired to Brooksville in '83 from Delaware and began to enjoy his career as a grandfather and, later, great-grandfather. But there were two grandchildren who lived much farther than a day trip away.

His daughter, Lisa, immigrated to Australia in '86 and raised both her children there. They were five and seven the last time he saw them.

At the beginning of this year, Lisa surprised him with an all-expenses paid trip to her home in Sydney. Along with the opportunity to visit with family, Wootten would be given an unexpected connection to his past.

His grandchildren are now 23 and 20, but Wootten had no trouble recognizing his granddaughter, who "looks just like her mother." The boy, the on the other hand, had become a man.

Aside from adjusting to his grown grandchildren's looks, Wootten had to adjust to the distinctive accents they spoke with.

"I could understand them pretty well," said Wootten. "Sometimes it got kind of garbled, but I don't hear too well these days anyway."

For six weeks Wootten caught up with his family in their home on the bay in Sydney. They took local excursions to landmarks like the Opera House and traveled along the coast to explore Australia's rich landscape.

But it was a special event at the end of his trip that he treasures the most.

Within a week of Pearl Harbor's bombing, there were reports that German U-boats were spotted off the coast of his native Delaware.

"That report angered him and frightened him," his daughter Linda Carter said. "He wanted to serve in the Navy and come to terms with that."

But the Navy had different plans for Wootten and he spent little time in the frigid North Atlantic. Within weeks of enlisting he had the trade winds of the Pacific on his face as his fleet set a course for the island of Guadalcanal.

Wootten was a sonar man charged with detecting Japanese submarines. His allies in the fight to keep American fleets safe were Australian spies called "coast watchers" hiding out on the occupied islands.

The coast watchers warned advancing ships about nearby Japanese enemies and are credited with saving many lives. Their transmissions were typically no longer than 30 seconds, otherwise they could be traced, captured and likely executed.

Decades later, Wootten got the chance to thank the survivors of the coast watchers unit that kept him safe near the island of Bouganville, near Papua New Guinea.

The Australian version of Memorial Day, called Anzac Day, is celebrated annually with a massive, nationally-televised parade through Sydney. Knowing how much his time in the service meant to him, Wootten's daughter, Lisa Harrington, arranged a spot for her father in that parade.

"The Australians have a tremendous national pride for their war veterans and this is the day to mourn and celebrate," Harrington wrote in an e-mail. "To extend the invitation to him is quite an honour."

The parade route took him about nine blocks, not a quite a mile, Wootten said, "but long enough for us old people."

A luncheon followed the parade and, as the only American veteran, Wootten was invited to speak. He was reluctant at first because he considered so many other men braver than himself. But with a little coaxing by his daughter, Wootten took five minutes to give a simple "thank you."

"We all cried, everyone in the room cried, it was incredibly moving. He was so proud to stand up and say his grandson, now a first generation Australian, could build his life from the freedom the men in that room had paved the way for him to do," Harrington writes.

The Wisdom Filtering Through Generations
In preparation for a story about their father's trip to Australia, a reporter asked three of George Wootten's children to share a special memory about their father.
Linda Carter, who lives in Georgia now, remembers her dad driving a new car home after work one Friday. It was a cream and white Lincoln Continental, which was the "absolute end of all ends" at the beginning of the 1960s, Carter said.
That night he took Carter, then around 5-years-old, and her brother and sisters to Dairy Queen for ice cream.
"I can't imagine the courage it takes for someone to take little kids to get ice cream in a new car," Carter said.
Wootten didn't give a lot of advice, but when he did it was valuable. Carter lists working hard and doing the right thing among the key tenets her father passed down.
Her son joined the Navy in part because of his grandfather's example.
Janet Sorrell, also in Georgia, has fond memories of reading the Weekly Reader with her father. She remembers her father pushing her on a swing hung from a giant oak tree out in their backyard.
"I would ask him to push me high enough to touch the sky," Sorrell said.
Wootten's daughter, Lisa Harrington, who now lives in Australia, remembers how her father instilled a lifelong confidence in her at the age of 5.
The family was at the beach on holidays and there was a little girl across the road that Harrington was desperate to play with. But she was too shy to introduce herself and she asked her dad for help.
Wootten told his daughter that he knew the girl, so he led her by the hand across the street and the two girls hit it off. When she returned from an afternoon of playing, Harrington thought to ask her dad how he knew that girl.
He didn't know her actually, but he wanted to demonstrate the point that it's easy to make friends. All you have to do is introduce yourself.
"From that day to this I'm not afraid to talk to anyone - public speaking, you name it," Harrington wrote by e-mail.