The painters showed up at 7:15am this morning to power wash the exterior of the house, which meant we had to get out of it. It’s washed with a bleach-and-water dilution which gives off some really nasty fumes.

Off we went to Anna Miller’s for Eggs Benedict. We met my sister there and had an enjoyable time, but we finished too soon. We needed to kill another hour or so before we could re-enter our house. What to do, what to do.

We decided to go to the memorial for the USS Utah, which was sunk on Dec. 7, 1941. Because the ship was on the other side of Ford Island, it wasn’t a part of Battleship Row and thus hasn’t gotten the attention the Arizona and the rest of those ships have. Back in the early 1970s Senator Frank Moss of Utah learned that and felt it should be properly memorialized. After a fund-raising campaign and some appropriations from Congress, a memorial was dedicated in 1972. My father was the Navy’s Officer in Charge of Construction, Mid-Pacific at the time, and he was responsible for sifting through the building proposals for its construction.

Here’s what it looks like:

You can read the plaques at the site here.