But to him, it’s a thing of beauty.

His mother made it, but that’s not what makes it special. It’s that his mother made it 67 years ago, on a very important day in American history.

He remembers it like it was yesterday.

Davey was 6 years old. It was a little before 8 a.m. on a Sunday and he and his brothers, Jack and Tom, were waiting for their breakfast. Their father, a Naval Public Works officer, was sleeping in, having been out late the night before at a company party.

They heard some noise. Their mom paid little attention, thinking it was just a military drill, even though, Davey recalled, they thought it unusual to have a drill on a Sunday morning.

The boys ran outside to investigate, not knowing they were about to witness a major event in their country’s history.

The silence was shattered by an ear-splitting, ground-shaking 500 tons of explosives detonated inside the USS Arizona, docked a mere quarter mile from where they stood.

It was Dec. 7, 1941 — the day the Japanese surprised the world by attacking a U.S. Naval base in Hawaii. The next day, the United States declared war on Japan and World War II was underway.

The boys had witnessed Pearl Harbor Day firsthand.

“I remember distinctly this Japanese face looking down at us,” Davey said of one of the pilots, flying less than 10 yards above them. He said he saw his face so clearly because they were flying with their cockpits open for better visibility amidst all the smoke from the torpedo hits.

To this day, he has not been able to forget that face.

“The face remained with me many years. My older brother had nightmares as an adult,” he said of their lingering memories of the sneak attack, which this year will observe its 67th anniversary.

Davey said after the Arizona exploded, his father shot up out of bed, gathered all of the mattresses in the house and sheltered his family underneath a pile of them, in the furthest bedroom away from the now infamous Battleship Row.

The attack claimed nearly 2,400 American lives, sunk or severely damaged eight battleships and damaged 188 aircraft and 19 naval vessels — all in a little less than two hours.

It was a very long two hours for the inhabitants of Ford Island, located right in the middle of Pearl Harbor, on the southern coast of Oahu.

After a lull in the enemy fire, Davey’s father herded everyone to the car and headed for the admiral’s house, the only place on the island with a bomb-shelter bunker. But the kids put on the brakes when they couldn’t find their cocker spaniel, Jojo, who had run off.

“He went under the house, which was pretty smart,” Davey said. “He survived.”

On their way to the bunker, Davey said he saw sailors packed into pick up trucks who were burned and covered in oil from having to swim ashore in the fiery wreckage from the exploded ships.

“There was no white spot on them,” he said. “That was scary.”

Davey’s family made it to the bunker, but as it started to fill with more and more people — military personnel, their wives and their children — they were transferred to other officers’ quarters. Davey said the wives were pitching in to take care of the wounded, even if it was “just giving them a cigarette.”

The kids were put to work too, loading machine gun belts.

“I remember thinking, six bullets, then a tracer, six bullets, then a tracer,” he said, detailing the order that the bullets had to be loaded into the belts, including the “tracer” bullet, which is fired first and emits a trail of smoke to map trajectory.

Along with the hearing loss Davey had already suffered by being so close to the Arizona explosion, his brother also dropped a box of 50-calibre machine gun bullets on his foot.

Despite that, Davey considers himself relatively unscathed and shares the stories and artifacts from that time with great enthusiasm.

Speaking of artifacts, what’s with the waffle?

Davey said the military packed up their house on Ford Island after they were relocated. The big wooden crates were eventually stored in the basement of his parents’ small duplex in Rhode Island.

When his mother was finally ready to move in 1966, 25 years had passed and those boxes were still unopened. Davey’s brother Tom unearthed his father’s original helmet along with the waffle iron, which was sealed shut.

The waffle was in near-perfect condition, Davey said. His brother kept it until he convinced him to let him borrow it to share its historical significance with others. He hopes to someday donate it to a museum.

Today Davey, a retired auditor and lawyer who has traveled the world, has an ongoing superstition about early December.

On Dec. 8, 1962, his son Scott, also a Cary resident, was born. On Dec. 7, 1979, his brother Tom suffered a heart attack, from which he thankfully recovered.

“Every Dec. 7, we kind of look around and wonder what’s going to happen,” he said.

The lasting images and lessons from that day can be discussed endlessly with the worldly Davey, who remembers that time in American history as tragic, but also inspiring great determination and camaraderie, qualities he said today’s America is lacking.

“I think we’re going to need that same kind of spirit now to solve our economic woes,” he said, citing a younger America’s victory gardens, strict rationing and recycling such small things as aluminum gum wrappers.

“There was a sense that we were part of an overall effort,” he said. “That we were doing what was in the best interest of the country.”

And if a shriveled-up waffle can remind us of that, he thinks he’ll hold onto it.