I Met the World’s Oldest Book Author
The legacy of a radioactive man, WWII veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor
A Distant Holiday
On Memorial Day, I often think about how blessed I am by those who gave their lives in defense of our nation, and also how I don’t personally know anyone who did.
As far as I know, nobody connected to me—friend, family, or otherwise—was killed in service. So Memorial Day is always kind of a weirdly distant holiday where I can’t actually picture the names and faces of the people I’m celebrating.
Of course, I know many people who served in the military: far too many friends to count, plus my brother, father-in-law, grandfather, uncle, and many other family members, all the way back to (and including) the Revolutionary War. But none of them, that I know of, “died in service.” So for me, Veterans Day has always been more personally meaningful.
But there is one man I met that I’ll never forget… a man who makes Memorial Day real to me, more than anyone else.
Meeting a Naval Lieutenant
That man was Navy Lt. Jim Downing, commanding officer of the USS Patapsco, former gunner’s mate aboard the USS West Virginia, and Pearl Harbor survivor.
After a long life of service, including 24 years in the military, becoming one of the founding members of the Christian ministry The Navigators, staying married to the same woman for over 69 years, and raising seven children, he finally decided to write his autobiography.
He did so at the astonishing age of 102 years old.
I met him on September 19, 2017, when he was preparing to go on a publicity tour to promote his book. I’ve worked with authors before, but he was, by far, the oldest prospective client I ever pitched! I visited his home to talk about building a better website and helping him promote his book using social media.
Imagine that! I was teaching a man born in 1913, before WWI started, who grew up in a house without indoor plumbing, how to use Facebook to promote his life story!
It was a total trip.
The Oldest Author in the World
When I walked into his house, I was very quiet—almost silent—as though entering a library or church. Lt. Downing rolled in on his electric scooter, and his presence filled the room.
There was a reverence in the air, like the hushed awe you feel in a hospital when a newborn baby arrives.
His caretaker called him “Jim,” but out of respect, I called him “Lieutenant” and “Sir.”
He had some kind of hearing aid device he held in his hand, and he had the iconic white Apple earbuds in his ears the whole time.
Even with his assistive devices, though, we still had to speak fairly loudly but delicately. There’s an art to doing this, and you want to be careful not to come across as angry—it’s a horrible look to be seen shouting at an old man, and you don’t want to repeat yourself too many times.
At the time, he was 104 years old, which officially made him the “World’s Oldest Author” — validated by the Guinness World Records and everything. Not just the oldest living author, but the oldest author ever.
What a crazy thought. Imagine writing your life story after a full century of living!
We talked about his book tour and how we could support his book sales with a website and digital marketing, and while I explained it a few different ways, he still couldn’t quite understand Facebook or how the Amazon Author Central program worked.
That’s fine. I didn’t blame him at all. That’s a lot to take in for someone who grew up before many parts of the country even had electricity.
At the end of our meeting, he gave me a copy of his book, which was an unexpected gift. Then, he autographed it for me, which I really wasn’t expecting. I was honored.
I gave him my proposal. His team said they’d get in touch soon.
They never did, and that’s fine: just over four months later, he passed away.
A Presidential Farewell
A few weeks before he died, though, he went to the White House and met with President George H.W. Bush, a fellow WWII veteran and naval officer. This event really opened my eyes to the impact that both of these men had.
To learn more about President Bush’s legacy, I got “Flyboys: A True Story of Courage” on audiobook and heard about the horrors of WWII on the other side of the globe.
Then, to learn more about Lt. Downing’s legacy, I didn’t read the book he gave me, but I did buy the audiobook as soon as it came out. That was a great choice.
Listening to it, I was astonished at his journey from a simple kid from a farming community in Missouri to a young sailor in the Navy stationed in Hawaii, who watched first-hand as the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor… and lived to tell the tale.
I won’t spoil his story for you, so I recommend you read his book yourself. It’s well written, and the man led a life so extraordinary that it’s nearly incomprehensible for people my age who haven’t lived through a war like he did.
Well, I will spoil one part.
The Radioactive Laundry
While serving in the Navy, Lt. Downing was part of the crew testing weapons near Bikini Atoll. He witnessed the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test, which was the most powerful bomb ever detonated by the United States (and still is to this day).
Due to an epic miscalculation, the explosion was much, much larger than the military planned for: over 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, and created a mushroom cloud that went 25 miles in the air.
Lt. Downing and his crew were exposed to so much radiation that it caused a panic in the Navy, but they only discovered this after they had returned to their base at Pearl Harbor.
They had received the equivalent of “470 dental X-rays over the entire body,” he later said.
Everyone and everything was contaminated with radioactive fallout: their clothes, gear, and even the ship itself.
A comedy of errors ensued. They scrubbed their ship from top to bottom for three weeks, trying to decontaminate it, but some damage had already been done, and they tried to find out where.
[We] had sent our laundry ashore to be washed. I had the return laundry checked; it was highly radioactive. I feared we had contaminated all of the laundry service’s customers.
The crew and I ended up putting all of our clothing, shoes, and bedsheets into steel barrels, and then filled the barrels with concrete. These were taken out to sea and dumped into one thousand fathoms of water.
I took a Geiger counter home. There was a radioactive trail every place I’d walked, as well as in my car. My friends treated me like a leper; they refused to shake my hand.
An Invincible Superhero
There’s an incredible irony in his life story.
This man, who was accidentally exposed to a bomb blast so big that some sailors said, “You could see the bone in your arm,” survived to be 104 years old!
Surely, I wasn’t the first to joke that instead of killing him, the radiation made him superhuman and invincible.
So this Memorial Day weekend, while I may not know anyone who gave the final sacrifice, I will be thinking of Lt. Jim Downing, who was willing to, but didn’t have to.
And I’ll be remembering the 2,400+ American service members who did, on that fateful day at Pearl Harbor.
Thank you, Lt. Downing.
Thank you for your bravery, your humility, your legacy.
…and thank you for the book!
Read his story:
The Other Side of Infamy: My Journey through Pearl Harbor and the World of War.
(Available in print and audiobook).