Decked out and trim in his Navy whites from World War II, Art Peters connects with teenagers in the classroom when he tells them he served with 200 other guys ages 17 to 25 aboard a ship the length of a football field.

He and the others were at sea for two years and three months without ever going ashore.

Peters, a White Center resident for 53 years, regales middle and high school students in the Highline School District with his experiences as a crewman aboard the USS Lyman, a 300-foot destroyer escort. Its crew protected supply convoys by hunting and destroying Japanese submarines in the South Pacific.

"They were always pinging for subs," he said.

His wife Gloria, who wears the white uniform of the U.S. Naval Reserve, complete with white gloves, accompanies Art to the classroom.

Gloria and Art met after the war and she joined the Naval Reserve because Art was in it. She didn't go to boot camp but learned how to shoot an M-16 rifle and identify different classes of ships. She did yeoman's work as a secretary in the Reserve. She sits to the side of the classroom and lets Art do most of the talking.

Art was a diesel mechanic, having gotten a year's experience working at Kenworth before joining the Navy. He worked in the ship's engine room where he and the other diesel mechanics kept the Lyman's two 1,500 hp, V-16 engines going.

The ship was moving 20 hours a day. Every hour they checked 15 different gauges that measured such essentials as pressure and temperature of exhaust, inlet water and outlet water. The steel deck would get so hot that the men often wore only their "civvies" or underwear, he said.

Destroyer escorts were the smallest, most maneuverable of the combat ships. They had dual propellers and could sail at 21 knots (about 25 mph). Destroyer escorts hunted submarines as they accompanied convoys of supply ships serving American forces throughout the South Pacific. The vessels carried fuel, food, ammunition, replacement aircraft and the other necessities of war.

The USS Lyman was about 100 miles off the coast of Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Peters said. He still relishes the thought of his ship arriving in Tokyo Bay 15 minutes before General Douglas MacArthur landed in a plane at the Tokyo airport three days before Japan surrendered.

Peters noted that the Japanese used a black flag to surrender instead of a white one.

The Lyman was never hit by enemy fire. At the end of the war, it sailed to San Francisco where 11 sailors drowned in the bay when an overloaded whaleboat being used as a shore launch sank while returning Lyman crew from liberty.

Peters' medals signify the different campaigns in which the Lyman participated, including the Philippines Liberation medal, Pacific-Asiatic Theater medal, Japanese Occupation medal and the World War II Victory medal.

Art left active duty as a third-class petty officer and returned to Seattle, his family, and his old job at Kenworth. But in 1951, both Art and Gloria were called up for active duty in the Korean War.

Gloria didn't have to go because she was pregnant. But Art was sent as a diesel mechanic aboard an attack cargo ship. He was on active duty in Korea for two years and left as a first-class petty officer.

Art finishes his talks to students explaining how he returned to civilian life and later started his own business. He bought a plane when he was in his mid-50s and learned how to fly. These days, he and Gloria still enjoy trips in their Airstream trailer.

"You get out of life what you put into it," Art said.

Tim St. Clair can be reached at 932-0300 or tstclair@robinsonnews.com