by Daniel A. Grunberg   --   Kensington, Maryland U.S.A


I was born in Belgium, a couple of years before World War II
started.  Although my father was born in Belgium and my mother was
born in New York, both of my parents were American citizens in 
business in Antwerp.  The situation in Germany was not fully
reported in the European press, but, fortunately for us, early in
1939 my New York grandparents made an extremely expensive trans-
Atlantic phone call, to talk some sense into my parents.  
We returned home, almost immediately.

A few days after Canada declared war on Germany, my father, who was
too old for the U.S. Army, went north to Canada to enlist.  He was
given a battery of aptitude tests, and my amateur-musician father
aced the rhythmic-pattern telegraphy-aptitude test.  The Canadian
Army trained my father to be a signalman.  

When my father returned from the war, he wrote the Morse code's
dits and dahs, and the phonetic alphabet's Ables, Bakers, and
Charlies on my toy blackboard.  Five years later, I studied from
that blackboard to become a ham.  

This article was last updated on 12 August 1997.