Thanks to my dad I became something I never thought I would be – a student of history. History was boring with no practical application in our fast changing, technically oriented world. Then I came across some pictures of my dad in uniform and the ship he served on during WWII – the USS Portland, a heavy cruiser that saw action at Midway, Guadalcanal, and other big battles in WWII in the Pacific. I asked him why he enlisted in the Navy instead of waiting to be drafted. He replied, “I wanted to protect my future family, just like my great grandpa and his dad before him.” Calvin K. Su...