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Editor's note: This is part of a weekly series published each Monday between Memorial Day and Veterans Day honoring local veterans.

Robert Myers

AGE: 84

HOMETOWN: Newton Falls, originally from Carrolltown, Pa.

BRANCH: Navy, seaman second class

EMPLOYMENT: Retired from Chrysler in Twinsburg

FAMILY: Eight children, Diane, Denise, Rene, Doreen, Rhonda, Dan, Bob and Ron, and 16 grandchildren.

ACTIVITIES: Member of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars

NEWTON FALLS - It was a railing that saved Robert Myers' life - at least the one time.

It happened nearly two years after the then-18-year-old took a bus from Carrolltown, Pa., to a stuffy auditorium in Pittsburgh on St. Patrick's Day 1943.

Along with three busloads of other young men facing World War II, he waited as military officers asked for volunteers for each branch of the service.

Their pants swooshed as each group stood to calls for the Marines, Navy and Army, he said.

Myers stood up for the Army. He got the Navy.

"And I was afraid of water," he said. "As a child, I almost drowned at one time. The Navy officer grabbed my paper out of my hand and wrote Navy on it."

A week later, he arrived at the USS Palmer, a minesweeper described to him that day as a suicide ship.

It was 100 degrees on the first day of June, he said. After saluting the flag and his officers, he and his comrades were abruptly shown their bunks and lockers.

"I thought ... 'What did we get ourselves into?'" he said.

After missions in places like Iceland, the Pacific, Pearl Harbor and the Marshall Islands, he learned the hard way.

In January 1945, the ship was in the Lingayen Gulf, sweeping mines one last time before heading out to the deep sea. Kamikaze planes swarmed overhead.

Then a cook on the ship, Myers was on the deck when he saw one head right toward him.

"I jumped up on the railing," he said. "I don't know why I got up there. But it saved me."

The plane dropped two torpedoes, and they collided with a load of ammunition. Myers' feet hit the railing just as it exploded. Most of the other seamen on that part of the ship at the time didn't make it.

"It blew that ship right in half," Myers said. "When I came to my senses, I was in the water."

It took about six minutes for the ship to sink. He found himself clinging to a broken raft, with just one other - who died of burns later that night - with him. After waiting 40 minutes, Myers was tired and scared.

"I thought, 'I'm going to let myself go, I can't hold on,'" Myers said. "My life history went through my mind, my family, the kids I went to school with. Then I lost my fear. I was taking my last breath when someone hollered, 'We're coming!'''

After recovering, he was assigned to the USS Colorado, the war ended, and he went home to Pennsylvania.

He'd grown up in Carrolltown and at 17 had first gone to work in the mines with his grandfather. It was a dangerous job, and part of it was to ignore cracking noises that came from the roof in the mine tunnels.

Every night, he and his grandfather carried their picks and shovels out before heading home. One night, they quit early and left their tools behind, he said.

"About the time we (left the mine) and sat down, the whole thing fell down," he said. "That was the last day I worked at the mines."

And it was just a few weeks later that he was drafted.

After he was discharged, Myers eventually moved to Ravenna to work with his uncle. He married his wife, Elizabeth, in 1947, and they had eight children.

Now retired from Chrysler in Twinsburg, Myers is involved in veterans organizations and collects memorabilia and articles documenting the fate of the U.S.S. Palmer.

He still remembers the names of his fellow s and officers and said he'll never forget his days on the ship. Or the railing.

"My life is a bunch of miracles," Myers said. "I think somebody looks after us, I do."

dloreno@tribtoday.com