Lori and I arrived In Pensacola with the children so I could attend the Limited Duty Officer/Chief Warrant Officer (LDO/CWO) Academy. She and the children stayed with friends and family while I lived in the barracks assigned to course attendees. Later, they went to Corpus Christi to stay with her mother until I finished the course.

I admit to some pride in my new position and uniform, though some trepidation also. I was now an officer in the United States Navy and a leader of men.

It’s funny how my perspective changed with the uniform. For nearly nineteen years, eight as a Chief Petty Officer, I had led and molded my subordinates, yet rarely thought of it that way. How naïve I felt.

Through those years, I spouted the Chief as the backbone of the Navy. I believed it then and still did, yet I was now a Chief Warrant Officer. A former backbone of the Navy just moved higher on the technical leadership ladder.

A Navy warrant officer comes from a rating where they have reached the E-7 or higher level. The warrant has mastered his specialty and demonstrated leadership skills sufficient to be a Chief Petty Officer. Now, the Chief Petty Officer faces the LDO/CWO selection board.

The candidate seeking the commission applies to the LDO/Chief Warrant Officer board. The application follows a template that details a picture of the candidate’s Naval service. There are pictures in uniform and a history of duty assignments, education, and off-duty activities. The candidate can include a letter giving his reason for seeking the commission. The candidate provides the package to his chain of command, and their local commander can endorse it.

The selection board reviews the packages and forwards a qualified list of selectees to the Secretary of the Navy. The list moves through a process resulting in the selectee receiving a presidential commission.

The selection board suggests an order to commission the selectees as part of the process. I was in the last group commissioned by the 1984 board. Regardless, here I was in Pensacola and a Chief Warrant Officer 2.

Break: I was now a Mustang. A Mustang officer is not a temporary or brevet promotion but is a commissioned officer that receives more pay according to their rank of O1-E, O2-E, etc., but (has) command responsibilities as all other commissioned officers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang_(military_officer))

The Limited Duty Officer/Chief Warrant Officer (LDO/CWO) Academy is commonly called Knife and Fork School. Though social/military etiquette elements exist, they cram much more into four weeks.

I remember a module on the history of warrant and LDO programs. Then, one required each of us to give a short talk evaluated by the others. We marched and learned to direct a marching group. There was physical training, and one had to pass the PT test before graduating. We learned sword etiquette, though warrant officers were not required to buy one. And speaking of etiquette, we learned how to prepare a table for a wardroom dinner and set the seating arrangement. It was the knife and fork part of the course.

Lori and the children were with her mother in Corpus Christi while I learned the nuances of being a warrant officer. My school moved along quite well until Hurricane Elena interrupted it. My memory of that event was staying in the barrack stairwell while the storm raged. The next day, I learned that the storm had produced tornadoes that damaged several hangers. Fortunately, the barracks and school buildings were undamaged.

Finally, the day came to leave for my next duty station. I was to return to FT Meade after picking up Lori, DJ, and Tiffany en route to our place on Falconer Court, FT Meade, MD.

We returned to the home where we lived the last months of my enlisted career and would occupy to start my life as a commissioned officer.

I arrived after completing instructor training, expecting to be one of several instructors in the Narrowband Direction Finding course. As it turned out, I was partially correct. As the only Chief Petty Officer assigned to the course, I would be the course manager and instructor.
When I took over the course, the content taught was the same as when I attended in 1967. We held day instruction classes and remedial night sessions for those struggling with the subject material. We conducted practical tests of the student’s troubleshooting processes.
The course began to change toward the end of my time with the course. I traveled several times to Alexandria, Virginia, to evaluate a replacement system. Fortunately, I was not required to develop the new course of instruction. There was a contractor to do that, but my instructors reviewed the proposed curriculum and how they might teach it. I transferred before the new course began.
There was another course in my building that taught the PDP-11. I knew several instructors and was allowed access to the computers when not in use. I used them as I learned the FORTRAN programming language. I created punch cards and ran the programs during their downtimes.
Chief, Naval Education and Training (CNET) tasked my department with collecting and reporting the instructors’ manhours. There were categories like time on the podium, conducting remedial training, instructor preparation, and more. Course managers correlated the data for their courses, and the administration department compiled the numbers for the department and sent the results to CNET.
I became tired of manually compiling the statistics for the six instructors in my course. So, I wrote a FORTRAN program to correlate the hours for my course. It ran on a PDP-11 and took a few minutes after entering the data to produce a perfectly formatted report on the line printer.

When receiving my report, the department admin questioned me and asked if I could work the format to fit the department’s needs. I modified the program, and they used it to consolidate data for the department instructors. The first, but not last, program I would write.
We lived in a house near the base. It was perfect for the three of us, with two bedrooms and a fenced yard. It was more of a base of operations than full-time living quarters. From it, we would deploy to families in Texas, Illinois, or Alabama. We spent many weekend nights playing canasta with cousins in Mobile, Alabama, or taking trips to Lori’s parents in Corpus Christi, Texas, or my parents in Washington, Illinois.
Lori became expecting, and we looked forward to having a second child. There were some concerns as she neared time to deliver. They scheduled an amniocentesis as she reached an expected delivery date. They wanted to ensure the baby was ready for the world via another c-section.
Let’s recap. We arranged a babysitter for DJ so I could be present in the hospital during the test. They performed the test and returned Lori to her room. The doctors wanted to keep her overnight because the baby’s heartbeat wasn’t returning to normal.
I returned home and picked up DJ. The phone rang soon after we got home. The hospital called to tell me to hurry back; they were taking the baby that night. The baby’s heartbeat had remained high, causing concern.
I dropped DJ off at the same sitter and rushed to the hospital. They were prepping Lori for the c-section when I arrived. The nurse took her blood and passed me the vials as they filled. I was to roll them until she finished the blood draw.
Now, it was time for the operation. I was previously approved to be in the delivery room with Lori. So, I helped push her down the hall and to the operating suite. I pushed her through the door when a nurse told me I couldn’t stay. The after-hours staff wasn’t sufficient to handle me should I have a problem during the surgery. I was disappointed I wasn’t in the room at the birth of my baby girl, Tiffany Elizabeth. My disappointment turned to joy when Tiffany was placed in my arms.
I neared the end of this tour. My orders came to Naval Security Activity, Galeta Island, Panama.
My exposure to computers at work instilled a strong desire for a computer to take to Panama. After some research, I convinced Lori to buy an Atari. So, we bought an Atari 800 with a 16-kilobyte memory module. Then, we purchased another 16-kilobyte module to take it to 32k and a cassette drive to store programs we might write. The computer used game modules, and we bought two or three current popular games: the Atari 800, an extra memory module, games, and a cassette drive cost over $1200.00. Though costly, it provided hours of entertainment and a source to learn programming.
It came time to leave Pensacola for another adventure in Panama.

It was to become the location for many firsts, my first car, first promotion, first leadership role, and first reenlistment.

I was promoted to Petty Officer Third Class and then to Second Class here.

Thanks to my computer school training, I spent several weeks in the Net Control Computer Center before being recalled to the work center supporting the UYK-3.

The recall came after one of the section leaders suffered an accident. He was walking to the barracks and fell into a deep ditch. On the way to the hospital, the ambulance was in an accident with a car that ran a red light. Bad luck twice for this petty officer.

I became a regular on the command pistol and rifle team. I earned the marksman designation and the medals for both.

The team had a cookout at the beach after one rifle match. It was a hot day, and the call of the water was great. I ate quickly and got into the surf, where I soon suffered cramps. Fortunately, I survived to write this.

The months flew by while assigned to a watch section working the 2-2-2-80 watch schedule. We started with a day watch. So I stood two-day watches (7 am to 3 pm.) I returned to work for the first midwatch at 11 pm, eight hours after the second-day watch. A second mid followed. After the second mid, was another eight-hour break before the first-eve watch at 3 pm. I had eighty hours free between the end of the second eve and the start of the first-day watch. It was “rinse and repeat.”

Then, in January 1969, I was assigned to drive the guard mail and supply run between the command and Norfolk. I left early each morning, made my pickups and deliveries, and returned in the evening. Very boring. It lasted about two months before being returned to my section work.

I mentioned the rattlesnakes and copperhead snakes. Shortly after I came to the command, there was a fishing contest. I heard one boat was passing under an overhanging tree when a snake fell into it. One fisherman grabbed a shotgun. He shot it and a hole into the boat. Dead snake, sunk boat. Did it happen? I don’t know, but it does make a nice story.

I re-enlisted in 1969. There were qualifications to meet, but I don’t remember them. I re-enlisted for orders to Hawaii and, of course, the bonus they offered. I was in three years and obligated for six more.

I probably lost some bonus but made out in the long run. Not long after I signed, the Navy decided to “M” branch technicians to two other ratings. They selected from M branchers who had not re-enlisted before. I went to Hawaii, and some fellow techs went to new ratings.

I left Northwest in January 1970. I had three years and two months in service. And I was only obligated for five plus more.

NaNoWriMo update

This shares an interesting Thanksgiving story. But first, an NaNoWriMo challenge update. Every day I am writing something towards the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in the month of November. I have completed fourteen days and I am ahead of schedule. I hope to finish by day 22 so I have Thanksgiving free. Today I passed 29k.

Smoked Turkey

Thanksgiving is next week. My wife and I were talking about the dinner this weekend. She asked to smoke a turkey which is something new for us. We have smoked chicken parts and found them delicious. A smoked turkey should be just as delicious. When we learned that a niece and family are coming to visit, we added an oven cooked turkey to the food list.

This started me thinking about past Thanksgivings we have shared. There have been 43 of them since we met. Our first Thanksgiving together was in Iceland. She had joined me in October and we lived in a Quonset hut outside the base. I don’t remember what we for dinner had but I know it was good. My wife is an exceptional cook.

Thanksgiving in Panama

We spent many Thanksgivings overseas in places like Iceland, Italy and Panama. The Thanksgiving that I will never forget occurred in Panama. Let me set the stage if you will. We lived in Pan Canal housing. The tropical housing routinely shown where you park cars under the house. ( Pictured above.) The command recreation center and mess hall (restaurant) was in a similar building near us. The wife was the command ombudsman.  She had many duties but one was to represent the command at commissary, exchange and public works meetings.

We bought our first Weber dome grill that summer. My wife found instructions for cooking a turkey on the grill. I don’t remember if I was happy or not with the prospect of keeping the grill fed with charcoal for the hours needed to grill a turkey. She prevailed. We would cook the turkey on the Weber. I fired up the grill and we put on the bird. Everyone else, including the mess hall, were cooking their birds in their electric ovens.

Dinner must wait? NO!!

It was about 2 pm when the power went out for the entire neighborhood. Turkeys sat in ovens partly cooked. My wife got frantic calls asking her to do something. Since she attended the public works meetings, they thought she might be able to get something done. They were right. She called the proper persons and soon trucks showed to work the problem. Hours later, power was restored. While others were cooking again, our grilled turkey was cooked and we had dined.  Some called it good luck, I called it good planning by my wife.

We have many interesting Thanksgiving but this is one that we relate when asked.  I would enjoy hearing about your favorite Thanksgiving memory. Use the comment form to tell me about it.

Save

Save

Why I enlisted in the Navy

I enlisted in the US Navy in August 1966 under a deferment program. I had 90 days to make preparations for leaving civilian life. The draft notice Uncle Sam had sent me was voided by the enlistment. I was property of the sea service.

On 29 November, 1966 I arrived at the induction center in Chicago, Illinois at about 6 am. I was very early. Eventually, someone unlocked the center. I was told they were not ready to begin processing new recruits and sent to a waiting area. I was told someone would call me when it was my turn.

Too scared not to, I followed directions verbatim. I sat for several hours waiting. I watched many men my age enter and be taken to other rooms. My patience exhausted,  sore from sitting on an uncomfortable chair, I stopped a passing sailor to explain my concerns. This caused a stir because the processing was nearly complete for the day.

I was hustled to a room where I filled out forms and took tests before undergoing a physical. After getting dressed, I was given a folder with my paperwork. I was taken to a room where recruits were receiving their assignments for boot camp.

Getting to San Diego Navy Recruit Training Center

I entered and placed my folder in the tray on the desk. My folder became the topmost folder. I was the last one through processing but would be the next considered. The sailor picked up my folder and called me to his desk. He reviewed my paperwork and asked me to select San Diego, California or Great Lakes, Illinois for boot camp.  I took the last opening for San Diego Naval Recruit Training Center given that day, 29 November 1966.

I was one of three recruits that boarded a flight to San Diego, California that afternoon. I would spend the winter in balmy California. As it turned out, the recruits at Great Lakes suffered through a very cold snowy winter. I endured rain in San Diego.

No Holiday Break

Boot camp did not break for holidays. I spent Christmas and New Years with my company. The highlight of training came the day my Father, a Senior Chief Petty Officer, came to visit. His ship remained in port long enough for him to attend my graduation. (He deployed to Tonkin Gulf off Viet Nam shortly after I graduated.) If you read my welcome blog, you know he recommended I join the Navy. *He also encouraged my two younger brothers to enlist when they turned 19.*

In retrospect, it is clear these series of events foreshadowed many times during my career when fortune shined on me. I had arrived before anyone and was the last processed.  As a result, I selected the last assignment to San Diego and missed the awful winter experienced by Great Lakes. And had I gone to Great Lakes, my father could not have visited or been present at my graduation. Fortune smiled.

I would enjoy hearing if  fortune or a lucky talisman has shined on you.

Save

Save

Save