The best reason I've ever seen...

On July 20, 1967, Petty Officer 1st Class David Jarvis Anderson submitted an unusual special leave request. His plea was simple. “My wife is planning on getting pregnant this weekend,” he wrote, “and I would sure like to be there when it happens.”

Anderson’s tongue-in-cheek entreaty seemed to have worked. It was, after all, the Summer of Love. While requests for special liberty can often reduce a poor service member to a desperate husk of a man, in 1967, it appears that the powers that be were a little more forgiving — allowing for Anderson to enjoy shore leave in the right port during a particularly crucial tide.

In traveling the seven-plus hours from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to the coal mining town of Layland, West Virginia, the sailor thwarted all would-be Jody’s in the area upon his arrival home. No word was readily available, however, on whether the pair’s weekend’s festivities produced the desired result.

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