NATCHEZ — Everyone has one father, but for a few months of Dan Keenan’s life he had 1,000.

Keenan, now 56, was adopted from a Korean orphanage in 1953 by a Navy doctor and spent approximately three months aboard the USS Point Cruz CVE, a WWII and Korean War aircraft carrier, before going to Spokane, Wash., where his adoptive mother waited.

The USS Point Cruz reunion is in Natchez this week and Keenan, still affectionately called “the baby,” was in attendance.

He now lives in Spokane, Wash.

Keenan firmly believes he owes his life to the crew of the ship, in particular, Admiral John T. “Chick” Hayward and Father Edward Riley.

Keenan is part American and part Korean.

“There is no doubt in my mind that I would have died at a very young age it wasn’t for those men and my father (Dr. Hugh Keenan),” he said. “When I got to the orphanage I was malnourished and had these sores on me, but the Korean nurses would not feed me, change my diapers or care for me properly.

“They were dedicated to racial purity, and I was a mixed breed to them.”

Keenan was discovered when he was just a few days old. He had been tossed into a garbage dump shortly after his birth.

“A couple of (American) soldiers were on patrol and they heard the baby crying and went to investigate,” said Cecil Thomas, reunion organizer and USS Point Cruz crew member. “They found the baby and took him to a Catholic orphanage there. At that time he was eaten up with ants and bugs.”

Riley and Hayward saw the baby at the orphanage and word began to spread about the treatment the American baby was receiving.

Keenan’s eventual adoptive father, who was stationed on the USS Consolation, a Navy hospital ship, went to the orphanage to check on the baby and that is when he fell in love.

While his adoptive father was on another ship, Hayward agreed to transport and care for the baby aboard the Point Cruz until he could be united with his adoptive mother in Washington.

“When I was about 7 or 8, my mom had taken my two sisters out and my dad and I were painting a fence in the back yard,” Keenan said. “We had been working for about an hour or so, and my dad said ‘Son, why don’t we take a break.’

“He started telling me this story about being in Korea and seeing this blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby peeping over the edge of the crib and he said ‘Danny, that baby was you.’”

Keenan said he never felt the urge to seek out his birth parents because to him, his adoptive parents were the only parents he desired.

Before Keenan was safe on the shores in Washington, he lived aboard the USS Point Cruz where life was anything but ordinary for a baby.

There wasn’t a room full of toys or pint-sized furniture, but what was present was love.

“Everyone wanted the job to take care of him,” Thomas said.

“At first, only those qualified, the pharmacy mates and such, could care for him. Once he was healthy enough, others were able to hold him.”

To alert members of the crew that the baby was coming on deck, Thomas said the crew would “run one of his diapers up the yardarm.”

And since naval ships don’t come stocked with diapers and baby supplies, the crew had to make do with what was available to meet Keenan’s needs.

“They cut up bed sheets to use as diapers,” Keenan said.

But, Thomas said, baby Keenan was never a fussy or needy baby.

“He was always very quiet and happy — easy to care for,” he said. “We all called him baby-san, because that was how everyone was referred to in Korea.”

But while Keenan may have been easy to care for, getting a baby from a Korean orphanage to American wasn’t an easy task.

Before the baby could be transferred to American custody, a visa and passport had to be obtained for him.

“At that time, it could take up to three years to get a visa,” Keenan said. “But my case was urgent so then Vice President (Richard) Nixon interceded and expedited the process so I could come home.”

The USS Point Cruz has had a reunion at a different U.S. location each year for the past 17 years. Keenan missed the first reunion but was able to attend when the crew met in San Diego in 1993.

That meeting was the first time the crew had seen Keenan since his adoption 40 years earlier.

It was a nerve-racking situation for everyone involved.

“Initially I was really nervous about meeting all of the guys,” Keenan said. “I really didn’t know what to expect, and there was part of me that thought they would look at me and think ‘that is it.’”

Similarly, Thomas remembers waiting anxiously for Keenan to get off the plane before the reunion.

“I didn’t know what he would look like or what he would be like,” Thomas said.

“He turned out a bit uglier than I thought,” he joked.

Since then, Keenan and Thomas have both attended the majority of the USS Point Cruz reunions to relive the story and that brought 1,000 sailors and a baby together.

“We’ll keep having these reunions until there isn’t anyone left to come,” Thomas said.

“I’ve told Danny ‘You’re going to have to turn the lights out on our last reunion.’”