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A Peaceful Mission
Camille Anding
Jim Lewis’s mom had heard
the expression “cuss like a
sailor” enough to know she
didn’t want her son to have
anything to do with the Navy.
That’s why Jim had to do a lot of convincing
before his parents would sign for his
volunteering for the Navy at age seventeen.
He explained to his parents that if he
didn’t volunteer for the service branch
he wanted, he’d be drafted into the Army.
“I want to be a sailor,” he urged his parents,
and he promised his mother he would never
use profanity. Jim kept that promise, and
for the next twenty-two years lived in ten
different states plus doing a tour in France
- serving his nation as a model sailor.
Lewis retired as chief
electrician and, on his last
tour, taught electrical engineering at Great
Lakes, Illinois, in the naval school. The
family moved from there to Pensacola,
Florida, where he and wife Dot planned to
retire. During their three years there, Lewis
taught in the Naval Junior ROTC program
at Woodham High School.
A visit to Brookhaven to see his parents
would turn out to be their next home for
thirty years. St. Regis Paper Mill had just
been built and during the visit, Lewis went
to see the new operation. When Lewis met
the electrical superintendent, he asked to
see Lewis’s application. “I’m not applying
for a job; I’m just here to look at the new
business,” Lewis answered.
The superintendent handed Lewis an
application and asked him to fill it out.
By the time the Lewis family had gotten
back to Pensacola, St. Regis had offered
him a job with a significant pay increase.
Brookhaven was now home.
After retiring from
the paper mill,
Lewis continued
using his
teaching skills
as a consultant at
Copiah-Lincoln
Community College
with students seeking
possible careers with
St. Regis. Also, Lewis didn’t just teach
others, he continued to learn throughout
his active life, earning his pilot’s license and
instructor’s license in 1975.
Sitting in the presence of a true patriot,
along with his wife of almost seventy-three
years and their middle daughter, Laura Oster,
stories of life in the military were a natural
commodity.
Imagine a teenager of fourteen years
moving with his parents from Jackson,
Mississippi, to a shipyard near Seattle,
Washington, for his dad to find work. At
age fifteen, Lewis also began working in
the shipyard during the day and worked
on high school classes at night. When
Lewis turned seventeen, World War II
had just ended. But Lewis volunteered
for the Navy.
When this young sailor got a thirty-day
leave, he visited his first cousin in Jackson
who was married to the sister of Dot
Yelverton. Dot, from Bay Springs, Mississippi,
happened to be living with her sister.
Dot and Jim met and spent the majority of
his leave as steady dates. Dot was “fifteen
and a half.” “I was young, but back then we
grew up faster. The times were harder,” Dot
said in describing their youthful romance.
“He was a gentleman - just what I wanted
in a husband.”
Hometown RANKIN • 21