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Defining Moments Are Happening Now

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By STEVE OTTO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 6, 2007

Olin Mott came over to the table where we were having lunch this week.

He wanted to talk about his ongoing project that is connecting young children with laptops and tutors at the University of South Florida.

It was an idea the tire dealer has worked on for several years at Joshua House, a shelter for children in crisis, yet another project he has been involved with for years. Now, the pilot program is going to expand into several public schools in January.

It's a terrific project and we'll write more about it later.

But as I watched him going on with an enthusiasm that is undiminished, I couldn't help thinking about today, or rather today 66 years ago.

It seems as if each generation has its own moment in time.

Everyone in this generation can remember what they were doing on Sept. 11 and always will. Everyone has his or her own story to tell, no matter how loose the connection to that event.

My generation remembers where they were the day President Kennedy was shot or when man walked on the moon. My parents could tell you where they were when President Franklin Roosevelt died or when World War II came to an end.

For each generation these are defining moments, if only markers of a greater story.

Olin Mott has his own memories of another day 66 years ago, the day they let him out of the hospital where he had been treated for appendicitis.

It had been a serious enough bout, enough to keep him in a bed for 30 days, but now he was not only feeling better, he was really hungry.

"I headed right over to the chow hall to get something to eat," he said. It was a great time to be alive. He was 20 years old and lucky enough to be stationed in Hawaii.

Attack On Pearl

"I was sitting in the mess hall at Fort Kamehameha near Pearl Harbor when we heard the first explosions," Olin said. Most everyone sitting in the chow hall assumed the explosions were from the nearby rock quarry. He went outside with some of the others, "which is when we saw the planes with the red circles on them."

Spread out in front of him was a scene of chaos. There were dead and wounded across the field, and fires were everywhere. He watched one man in a small boat take the craft directly into sheets of flame while trying to save other sailors.

Olin remembers teaming up with four others and setting up a .50-caliber machine gun on a wall to fire back at the strafing planes. He was injured when an ammunition truck blew up only yards away and an ammo box struck his back.

Waiting For The Invasion

He didn't sleep all that night, instead sitting in a watchtower where he could see tracer bullets firing into the night, waiting for the Japanese invasion they were sure was about to happen.

It all seems so long ago. A couple of years ago, Olin told me he was the only one left from his unit of 80 men. The only other survivor had called to tell him he was dying.

So it is all the more amazing that Olin Mott is as pumped up over his newest project mentoring children at risk and making a very real difference today. It turns out that his defining moment was not that day so long ago, but a lifetime of giving back to his community.

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