(Editor’s note: With last week’s discovery of the wreckage of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, The Era is reprinting a story from 1994, the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when Bradford resident Vince Goodrich shared his story. He was one of 120 survivors from the 224-man crew when the ship sank.)

Like a lot of young men during World War II, Vince Goodrich left high school before graduation to serve.

He was only 17 when he joined the U.S. Navy in Syracuse, N.Y., in October 1943.

After recruit training at Sampson, N.Y., he was sent to fleet sonar school at Key West, Fla. Later he was assigned to the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a new destroyer escort and was serving as a sonarman 3rd class at the time of the battle of Leyte Gulf.

“At one time during the war I believe I was the youngest legal petty officer in the Navy,” Goodrich laughingly told The Era, noting there were certainly many teenagers who had lied about their ages to join. “But that only lasted about two weeks.”

As a sonarman, Goodrich helped to keep track of enemy ship movements during the battle.

After he and other survivors of the Roberts were picked up out of the water, he was shipped to New Guinea and then placed on a troop transport which landed at Brisbane, Australia, for supplies and then made the run straight to San Francisco in 15 days.

Goodrich was reassigned to serve on an old WWI-model destroyer that had been converted to a high-speed troop ship, and then he helped to decommission ships at San Diego.

“When I was discharged from the Navy I was discharged at one table and I immediately walked over to another table and took the oath in the Naval Reserve,” he said.

Goodrich served in the Reserve for 35 years, retiring in 1978 as a commander.