WWII veteran perfect fit as tour guide for aircraft carrier

A tour of the aircraft carrier Yorktown starts with Vincent "Jim" Verdolini.

He's one of Patriots Point's last volunteer World War II veteran guides who can lead a group through the lower decks, telling stories of the Yorktown's early days.

But before he goes below, Verdolini stops outside the Medal of Honor Museum telling people that there are just three kinds of heroes. The kids who didn't come back, Medal of Honor recipients and the corpsmen.

"The rest were just doing their job," he says.

Verdolini served as a radioman aboard the aircraft carrier Randolph, a ship almost identical to the Yorktown, so it becomes a good setting for his own stories.

At 82, he can take a ship's ladder to the Yorktown's lower deck more quickly than most of the tourists he guides. But before people follow, they want to know how Verdolini has lived so long.

He answers by pulling out a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes from a shirt pocket. He started smoking when he joined the Navy at age 17.

Verdolini started his Navy career on what he calls a baby carrier, the escort carrier Guadalcanal.

He was aboard when they took a German U-boat, a submarine, complete with its code books, he said. Verdolini passes out photos of the capture as he tells the story.

Pat Malone, a tourist from New Jersey, looks at the photos and glances back at Verdolini, taking a step back.

"I've seen all the documentaries. You were there? That's amazing," he says.

Ned Forney, Patriots Point director of education, said the tours from veterans who've been there make the experience that much more special.

"It's so much more powerful when you meet a veteran and get a tour. ... People love the stories," he said.

Verdolini can still remember his part in the Battle of Okinawa, and the day he learned what a real hero was when a corpsman asked him to hold a man's stomach together.

Passing into a sleeping area where it's so humid that paper curls at its edges, Verdolini looks comfortable. He's withstood much more than this.

He and fellow servicemen slept in their underwear using cornstarch and powder so they didn't stick to their beds.

Tourists enjoy his stories, but they worry.

Verdolini says people ask him, "Hey, Jim, you are the vanishing generation, 5,000 a day of you are gone. What's going to happen to the stories?"

Then he passes around a card for www.thenavysvanishinggeneration.com. It's a Web site where he and other Navy men have posted some of their writings.

Patriots Point also has done its part, videographing Verdolini's tours.

One day, when Verdolini can no longer take the steps, tourists will stop along the way, pausing to watch stories from a screen. Although they won't be quite the same.

Reach Jessica Johnson at 937-5921 or jjohnson@postand courier.com.