Amarillo.com has reported on a hero living in the Texas Panhandle.
Past midnight on July 30, 1945, Cleatus Lebow was drinking lemonade and talking with some of the other guys on the USS Indianapolis. Then came the explosion. “We all knew it was a torpedo,” says Lebow, who was 21 at the time. Suddenly swimming in shark-infested waters, he had been thrown into the most deadly tragedy in U.S. Naval history. Still, he felt a reassuring calm.
Of the almost 12 hundred sailors on board, Lebow was one of only 317 survivors. 14 of those survivors attended the 70th reunion of the Indianapolis in Indiana last week. Cleatus worked for General Telephone for four decades and lives in Memphis, Texas. He is 91.