I am writing to tell you of the death of my father, Myron N. Pederson, who served on the Salt Lake City in "the radio gang." A brief letter he sent you appears on this page.

He died of metastatic pancreatic cancer on July 9, 2003, at age 82. He had only received the diagnosis in May, so it all happened very fast.

He never used the internet, but was very interested in your site when I told him about it, and enjoyed some of the items I printed out for him, especially those having to do with the Battle of the Komandorskis, which occurred about a month after he came on board the SLC.

He didn't tell you all that much in the letter he sent you, I see. He said he'd been in Minneapolis since 1946. He did move there not long after WWII, but he was also on active duty in the Navy again from 1950-'52. I don't know very much about that tour, but he was in Europe, in the Mediterranean, for at least some of it, perhaps all of it. (He was beginning to have some lapses of memory in the last year or so of his life, and perhaps that's why he wasn't too precise in his chronology when he wrote you. However, it's true that he lived in Minneapolis all the time that he wasn't in the Navy from 1946 on.)

He worked in Minneapolis for the Great Northern Railroad for a number of years. He and my mom married in 1958. I was born in 1960 (the only child). He left the railroad and began working for the post office in 1964, and retired from there in 1987.

I have a picture of him in his uniform that he wanted me to send you, and I will scan it and send it to you soon.

It was not long after my dad was diagnosed with cancer that I revisited your web site and found the questionnaire for veterans that you had put up since the last time I'd seen your site. I thought that it looked like a great tool for recording the history these men have to share. I had planned to tape record his answers to the questions, but, I deeply regret to report, he became too ill to communicate before I had a chance to do it.

Thanks for the labor of love you do with your web site. I've learned a lot from it. It makes me wish I'd listened more carefully to my dad's Navy stories, and asked him more questions earlier.

Regards,

Dianne Boardman