This is going to be a multiple page remembrance sort of thing. Not a diary and not, certainly a biography, it being written by myself to you the world wide reading audience and you'll be visited with the usual array of bad language, angst, piss-off ed ness and whatever. I'm going to try to keep it all facts and dated as well as I can recall but the early parts are going to be an admix of my own feelings and such and what I was told by others. Broad strokes will be taken along with trivial bullshit that probably means nothing to anyone except myself. I beg you forbearance if I pain you in anyway or say inappropriate things that create a sense of hurt.
Life began at Mercy Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana. I've been there since and wrote to them upon occasion regarding my birth certificate, needing it for one thing or the other. They answered with explanations so I suspect that Mercy was indeed the place of my birth on August 17th, 1943, a summer's day. My mother's name was Anne Lute and her maiden name was Anne Teriaca. My father was Nelson Lute a Corporal in the US Army at the time and had been in the service some 8 years when I was born. He was 23 at the time and had been implored the way the military implores you to ship out, family in tow, to Ft. Clayton, Canal Zone, Panama. I, of course, had no say in this travel whatsoever and as I awakened from my very early childhood I found myself amidst a rainy, humid, tropical place and grew adapted to it over the years.
Mercy Hospital, New Orleans
We had a maid named Louise, a black creole she was, a native Panamanian and my personal "wet" nurse as well as being our household's keeper and cook. She slept overnight on the screened veranda overlooking the parade ground. She woke early, fixed us breakfast and departed to shop for lunch and dinner. She was warm, kind and spoke with a lilting voice that sounded like music to me. I loved her. She didn't live with us but lived a bus ride away in Panama City on the Pacific coast. She stayed the week and went home to her own family on the weekends. Sometimes she took me with her. I would play in the streets of Panama with her children and her neighbor children as carefree as we could be while the war in the Pacific held it's own threats against us all. My days on Ft. Clayton were spent playing with neighboring GI children while my father had left us for his own very private war against the Japanese in the Pacific. In later years when asked he would not discuss it, it broke his heart it seemed and he lost a brother fighting in Corregidor in the Philippines.
Life began at Mercy Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana. I've been there since and wrote to them upon occasion regarding my birth certificate, needing it for one thing or the other. They answered with explanations so I suspect that Mercy was indeed the place of my birth on August 17th, 1943, a summer's day. My mother's name was Anne Lute and her maiden name was Anne Teriaca. My father was Nelson Lute a Corporal in the US Army at the time and had been in the service some 8 years when I was born. He was 23 at the time and had been implored the way the military implores you to ship out, family in tow, to Ft. Clayton, Canal Zone, Panama. I, of course, had no say in this travel whatsoever and as I awakened from my very early childhood I found myself amidst a rainy, humid, tropical place and grew adapted to it over the years.
We had a maid named Louise, a black creole she was, a native Panamanian and my personal "wet" nurse as well as being our household's keeper and cook. She slept overnight on the screened veranda overlooking the parade ground. She woke early, fixed us breakfast and departed to shop for lunch and dinner. She was warm, kind and spoke with a lilting voice that sounded like music to me. I loved her. She didn't live with us but lived a bus ride away in Panama City on the Pacific coast. She stayed the week and went home to her own family on the weekends. Sometimes she took me with her. I would play in the streets of Panama with her children and her neighbor children as carefree as we could be while the war in the Pacific held it's own threats against us all. My days on Ft. Clayton were spent playing with neighboring GI children while my father had left us for his own very private war against the Japanese in the Pacific. In later years when asked he would not discuss it, it broke his heart it seemed and he lost a brother fighting in Corregidor in the Philippines.
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