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The Carrol J. Downing Collection

     Mr. Downing was born in 1926, and he passed on in 2006. He grew up in 1944.
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     In 2009, his daughter, Margaret Downing Acquarulo of Pennsylvania, received a box of snaps from her brother. She wrote, " I recently received a box of memorabilia that my brother had been storing, and in it, I came across several photos of the crew members of the George E. Davis, along with two notes from my dad to his mother dated Oct. 24, 1945, Manila, when he sent her the pictures.  At that point, he was 19 years old and had been in the navy from age 17."

     Margaret asked a friend to help her with the photos.... Margaret writes, "Nikki Kuhn is the graphic designer who enhanced and sharpened the photo images on this page.  Nikki lives and works in the Philadelphia area and is a graduate of the Art Institute of Philadelphia.  You can reach her for similar work by emailing simplymitra@gmail.com."
----     Ed Note: Great thanks must be extended to Margaret Acquarulo in the preparation of this collection. Because it is so large, her suggestions and proofreading proved invaluable...This, after delivering the original project photos to us to start. A shipmate to be proud of. ----
     Nikki did the hard work of scanning in the photos and cleaning them up. Because there were so many, Margaret placed them on a CD (which you may purchase...Visit our How You Can Help page) and mailed them to Norm with the DE357.com website. He prepared them for inclusion, and you may see them all by clicking on the blue numbers in the box to the left. The numbers, by the way, coincide with the numbers found on back of the photos.

     Evidently, the same photos were made available to anyone who wanted them. The various shipmates wind up with different sets, with many common photos, it seems.  At this time, we aren't positive who had the Brownie camera, however, Mr. Downing mentions the name Palmer  ( PALMER, Lloyd Tilden ?) and even says he's from Richmond, Virginia, so we will credit him with the excellent photo coverage! And...I suspect that many of the island pictures showcased the men who were on leave the same time as he was.
     The thing that is different in the Downing Collection is that Mr. Downing actually put names on the back of each picture. This is tremendous. It's like a dinosaur signing the bedrock beside his fossil, T. Rex. We now have names to go with many faces that earlier, we did not have. The import of this is that this will help shipmates of the future find their long lost relative. And it has already shown results. The only photo, out of all of them, with writing on the front...the Trout photo, has already helped the Trout family, who wrote several months before this picture was available. The son of Trout said he knew nothing of his dad's service... Well, now he does.

Most of the photos have have Mr. Downing's captions included in his own handwriting. We have done our best to print the names for the benefit of the search engines and future family searches.

Mr. Downing was obviously everything we have come to expect of the brave, and gallant young men who were prepared to sacrifice all for their country. Just think of it....a boy, not even out of high school, who couldn't wait to serve. Thank God that today there are still kids like those of Mr. Downing's caliber. Our kids...Our heroes. Some even write home to their moms...

     Thanks to the excellent work of Margaret and Nikki, and the foresight of Mr. Downing, you have a chance to take a peek into our past, and his future, as his life aboard the magnificent USS George E. Davis, the DE357 unfolds.

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