Phil Donohue in the Marines

I know a whole lot about this, but all scrambled.
A defining period in Dad's life was his stint in the Marines, where he went at age 17. He was in the 6th fleet in the Mediterranean. He was in Orran North Africa, where he was so sunburned he was hospitalized, and all over Italy [see first posting for my most adored photo - the Leaning Tower of Pisa tourist shot], and here is Rome - the photo is torn, but there is enough to bear out what he told me.

I remember he differentiated the macho Marines from the gay Sailors, who had gone for him, and I thought how overly simplistic that was. This photo, however, has dad crouching in front [2nd from left] beside a sailor who looks absolutely trans-gendered!

Years later a friend who is an old - exquisite - Queen from the Bronx showed me a photo of himself in the navy in the 1950s and described it as the best time of his life [implication being as a gay man], and I wondered if he was on my Dad's ship...hysterical to imagine.

Dad became cosmopolitan, I believe, from the travel and diversity of construction and the Marines. It made him receptive and inquisitive to become the reader and social creature he became.