The Story of an Orphaned Baby Cared for On A US Navy Ship During the Korean War

Here is an interesting story from the Korean War that I had not heard of before about an orphaned baby that was taken aboard and cared for by sailors on a US ship:

Father Riley looks on as Genevieve Keenan holds her new son in 1953.

Life could only get better for Danny Keenan after a Navy medic found him as an abandoned infant on the steps of an infirmary at a U.S. base in South Korea in 1953.

His luck changed so much for the better that it must have rubbed off on a gambling chaplain who won him a Korean passport in a poker game, wagering a bottle of the captain’s best scotch as the final, winning bet.

Before that, however, it appeared as though the baby might die of neglect in an orphanage, until Navy seamen, including two from La Crosse, took him aboard the USS Point Cruz (CVE 119) and doted on him.

“I never would have survived if not for the intervention of the skipper and the men of the Point Cruz,” the 64-year-old Keenan said during an interview last week in La Crosse.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but the baby was eventually adopted by a Navy surgeon and brought back to the US where he became Danny Keenan who attended Washington State University and became a sports journalist.

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