From my “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar archives thanks to Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Pipey, and cousin Nancy:
Goofy guy’s observation of Frothingham’s Fourth Law: i believe Frothingham may have been Stephen Covey’s inspiration. Hmm…maybe Covey got his ideas for his book from a “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar.
It was Tuesday August 9, 1983.
After my marriage and ten-day honeymoon, followed by a flight from San Diego to Nashville, I picked up my car at my parents’ home in Lebanon, Tennessee and drove to Chattanooga to spend the night with my sister and her family on Signal Mountain. The next morning, I threw my suitcase into the back, hugged my sister, Martha Duff good-bye, and settled into the driver’s seat of my Mazda Rx7.
It was 500-plus mile trip from Signal Mountain, Tennessee to Jacksonville, Florida and Naval Station, Mayport. With a lunch break, the drive would take nine, maybe ten hours. I hoped to make it in time to get a haircut at the Naval base barbershop. I had not had a haircut since leaving Newport, Rhode Island in mid-June. It would not be good form for an executive officer to report aboard his new ship looking shaggy. I wanted to make a good first impression, especially on the commanding officer.
I actually was looking forward to the drive. It would be the first time since late May, I would take the time to really put in some thought about my new job.
It was not a job I particularly wanted.
As I pulled out of the driveway and maneuvered down the switchbacks of Tennessee 127, I calculated lunch time and place. If all went well through Atlanta, I could make Cordele, Georgia for lunch. That would make it tight for getting a haircut. I wished I had called to see when the exchange barbershop closed. I guessed 1600 or 1700.
It was a long, mostly flat and straight stretch once I reached I-75 on the south side of Chattanooga, straight south through Georgia, and then straight east to Jacksonville on I-10. I reached over and grabbed the cassette rack from the shotgun seat. I found one of my favorites, Dave Loggins’ “Apprentice” album. I had listened to “Please Come to Boston” along with Olivia Newton John’s “I Honestly Love You,” and Roger Whittaker’s “The Last Farewell” incessantly while playing shuffleboard in the Sasebo, Japan “Town Club,” the officers club for the U.S. Naval base there during a month-long well-deck gate repair in 1975 when I was First Lieutenant on the USS Anchorage (LSD 36).
I put the cassette in the stereo player in the center of the console and kicked the Rx7 up to 75. I figured that speed was the maximum to keep me from being stopped by the highway patrol.
* * *
I was not thrilled with my new duty station. I had hoped to be the executive officer of a large amphibious ship or less likely, a cruiser. They were commander billets and most attractive for advancement, and would be going to sea. When I was accepted for return to active duty back in 1972, my goal was to spend all of my tours on a ship and to make commanding officer. That was a naïve idea, impossible in today’s Navy where promotion requires obtaining non-at-sea skills ashore. It’s a bureaucratic, inter-Navy political, advancement thing. That doesn’t make it bad, just different from my idea of the Navy. I wanted to be a mariner at sea, possibly for the rest of my life. When I was selected for commander after being passed over once, I still was shocked when my detailer told me I had not been selected for an XO billet.
Not knowing what to do, I placed a call to Captain Ted Fenno, the head of Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) detailing (officer placement) branch. Ted had been the XO of the USS Stephen B. Luce (DLG 7) when I had returned to active duty in 1972 after two years as sports editor of The Watertown (NY) Daily Times . The Luce XO and the CO, CDR Richard Butts, had appreciated my leadership as ASW officer and my ship-driving ability. I became the sea detail, general quarters, and refueling Officer of the Deck before I left for the Department Head course at Destroyer School.
My call was transferred to Captain Fenno.
“Congratulations, XO,” Fenno greeted me.
Confused, I responded, “But Captain, my detailer just told me I hadn’t been selected for exec. I was calling you to find out what you recommend I do next.”
There were a few seconds of quiet. Then Fenno said, “Jim, hang on to the phone. I need to do some checking on this.”
The phone went silent for over ten minutes. Then Captain Fenno came back on line.
“Jim, I apologize. There has been some confusion here. You have been selected for executive officer. Your detailer will call you in the next few days to tell you what ship and when you will report.”
More than grateful, I signed off with, “Thanks, Captain.”
As I pulled onto the interstate, I once again reviewed the possibilities. Either Fenno or the detailer had read the selection notice wrong. I hoped and believed it was the detailer who was wrong. Captain Fenno would have been involved with the selection process. Still, I couldn’t figure out how the detailer could have screwed up so badly. Regardless, I didn’t think it was a good omen.
My suspicions were confirmed when I received the next call from my detailer. “Congratulations. You have been assigned as executive officer of the USS Yosemite.”
“You’re kidding,” I almost shouted, “A tender? Is there any chance we could change it to a cruiser or amphib?”
“No,” the detailer replied, “All the assignments are locked in.”
All of the possible options rushed into my mind. I had never considered what I might do if I wasn’t selected or didn’t get a combatant ship. I had roughly six years left before I would complete my active duty service and be eligible for a retirement pension. I wanted to achieve my goal to be a commanding officer. I had qualified for command. But the XO tour was a critical and necessary step for selection. Being on a destroyer tender that stayed pier side in its homeport was not going to help.
Perplexed, I asked the detailer to speak to Captain Fenno again.
“Captain, the detailer told me I have been assigned as the Yosemite XO. I don’t really want to spend my last sea tour tied up to a pier. I came back in the Navy to spend all of my career on ships at sea. A tender by a pier wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“I understand, Jim,” the captain replied, “but that’s the only assignment we have for you. And tenders now deploy.” He hesitated and continued, “The Yosemite is the best tender on the East Coast,” hesitating again. “Before you make any decisions, why don’t you call up Admiral Butts? He’ll give you his honest opinion.”
Of all of the CO’s I had served under, now Admiral Butts was one of the five best. He had also become a good friend while aboard the Luce. I called, and Admiral Butts was enthusiastic about the Yosemite. He even said the tender would deploy in the fall.
* * *
After the two calls, I reconsidered. Even though she was a tender, Yosemite had always had a great reputation. I remembered when I was on ships homeported in Newport, I would find ways to take our work to Yosemite, the Cruiser Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet flagship at the time, rather than our “parent tender.” Yosemite’s repair work was far superior.
If I declined, I would have to spend the next six years in shore tours. I had never liked the shore establishment. My Navy was at sea. If I was lucky, I would have a good tour on Yosemite and get selected for command. That would get me close to the retirement (sic) requirement of twenty years of active duty. It wasn’t likely, but I knew this was my last and only chance.
I confirmed I would accept the assignment to Yosemite with my detailer. Soon, I found out the deployment would be in September, seven-plus months to the Indian Ocean, shortly after I would report aboard.
It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, in February, I began to think about having women as part of the crew. In the previous fall in San Diego, the married executive officer of the Prairie was relieved for cause after having an affair with his female operations officer. When I heard the news, I thought the Prairie XO was just plain stupid. Now, even though the assignment would have no effect on whether I married Maureen or not – after all, I believed I had found the woman I wanted to be with the rest of my life – I was glad I got married 12 days previously. It was going to be tough enough to be XO with women officers and crew. Being single would be like having a target on my back. I had learned from my detailer the guy who was now commanding officer almost didn’t accept me for XO. Captain Francis J. (Frank) Boyle was rightfully concerned about the problems a single commander would have as executive officer. He relented and accepted me for the job when he learned I was getting married before reporting aboard.
* * *
As I was leaving the Okinawa, I went to the Captain’s cabin to say farewell to my commanding officer, Roger Newman. He had been one of the better CO’s in my career and we had become good friends as well as golfing partners. After shaking hands and thanking each other for helping each other through an overhaul and following operations, Roger turned serious.
“Jim, you know XO is different from all of the other billets you’ve had,” Roger began.
I had been XO as a LTJG on a transport unit overseeing Korean troops being transported to and from Vietnam on Military Sealift Command ships, and I had been the emergency XO of the USS Cayuga (LST 1186) for almost three months, a successful and challenging tour, albeit short, in my Navy career. I had been given a great amount of advice on being a full tour executive officer and had been told many sea stories. I thought I understood what my role would entail. Roger made it crystal clear.
“You know when you become executive officer, your most important job is to support the captain,” he explained, “It doesn’t matter what you think about his decisions, if you don’t like his actions, or even if you don’t like him. Your job is to support him, to do anything to make him successful, to be his voice, his mirror reflection. That is your primary job.”
It was rather sobering, and I had been thinking about Roger’s admonition off and on since I began this journey to Yosemite (I think I adhered well to Roger’s advice with the exception of one instance).
* * *
My extremely limited experience with women in the Navy, enlisted or officer produced a great deal of concern for me when I was assigned to the one-month Prospective Executive Officer (PXO) Course at Destroyer School in Newport, Rhode Island.
When I discovered there was no training for being responsible for women on ships, I asked to be sent to TAD (temporary additional duty) in the last week of that training to Washington, D.C. and Norfolk to learn from those in charge of the Women In Ships program and from standing XO’s on ships with women on board in Norfolk, Virginia. The last week of the XO program was for specific types of ships to which the PXO’s would be assigned. There was no specific training for tenders. I was supposed to attend the week of training for service force ships. When the Destroyer School command refused to send me TAD, I was granted a week’s leave so I could find out what I could on my own. After arriving in Norfolk, I was unable to schedule an appointment with the Women In Ship’s coordinator in D.C. Finally, in a telephone conversation, she and I discussed what I should expect. She told me to read the regulations. Duh! There was no real revealing information.
I was able to meet with one executive officer, Captain Livingston on the USS Yellowstone (AD 41). I left that hour discussion disillusioned. In my opinion, Captain Livingston was treating the women in his crew like second-class citizens.
So all I knew about women at sea wouldn’t fill up a thimble. My only thoughts were to never put myself in a difficult situation, intended or not, and to treat the women in my command as equally as possible.
I just hoped my new commanding officer, Captain Francis J. Boyle felt the same and would be able to give me guidance.
As I drove, I thought of an irony. While in OCS, my dream sheet for my first assignment was to be a Combat Information Center (CIC) Officer on a destroyer homeported in Mayport. I had received orders for exactly that, but on Thursday, January 31 (1968), two days before I was to be commissioned, I received new orders to report to Anti-Submarine Warfare School in Key West and then report to the USS Hawkins (DD 873) homeported in Newport. At least, my desire to be stationed in Mayport had been granted, only sixteen years late.
The traffic through Atlanta had been slow. I decided to skip lunch, just refuel, and see if I could get to Mayport in time for that haircut. As I turned off of I-75 onto I-10 East, I quit thinking about anything except driving and directions.
I made it to the base in good time, but the exchange was closed. Not wanting to report aboard and deal with meeting folks that night, I checked into the BOQ, to get some sleep and hopefully get a haircut before reporting aboard the next morning.
When I awoke the next morning, the front desk told me the exchange barbershop did not open until ten. So around 0830, knowing morning quarters and officer’s call would be completed, I checked out of the BOQ, drove to Yosemite’s berth and reported aboard.
My adventure was about to begin. I knew it would be my last chance to stay at sea.
From my “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar archives thanks to Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Pipey, and cousin Nancy:
Goofy guy’s only comment on Murphy’s First Corollary: Amen!
This column ran in The Lebanon Democrat, October 20, 2015. It remains one of my favorite stories.
SAN DIEGO – If this story has been told here before, I apologize, but if it was here, it appeared a long time ago, and my filing system, such as it is, shows no mention.
Over a decade ago, my friend Jimmy Gamble sent me a letter containing an old sports article. I scanned the story and emailed it to a number of people. Marty Linville, one of my Friday morning golf buddies, responded. Marty, who played football at Pittsburg State in Kansas (the Gorillas won the NCAA Division II championship in 2011, added a play-by-play description of one touchdown. I believe that email exchange is the only time I wrote about this incident.
Regardless, it is a great story and good for my ego.
Jimmy Gamble, who sent the original letter is now retired from the defense industry and lives in Huntsville. He became my close friend when his family moved to Lebanon in 1956. His father Barney became one of the most respected and longest termed principals in Lebanon.
Jimmy and I played football and basketball together from our first year at Lebanon Junior High School until graduating from Castle Heights in 1962. We went to church together and ran around town in his used Renault Dauphine, one of the earliest models. In our final years at Heights, Jimmy and I dreamed of getting football scholarships to Michigan together. Of course, it was a pipe dream. Jimmy and I played our last football with the 1962 Mid-South Champion Tigers.
There were some low spots in the middle, but we started and finished on high notes. Our first team’s success is well documented. The 1956 Lebanon Junior High Colts ran the table for an 8-0 season in 1956 when Jimmy and I were subs and seventh graders.
We finished on the 1961 Mid-South champion Castle Heights Tigers, with a 6-2 record. One of those losses was 6-0 to Furman (Va.) Junior College, ranked the number four junior college in the country.
One of our successful seasons has been mostly overlooked. In our eighth grade year, the Colts posted a 7-1 record with a lone loss to Pulaski. That game was the first football contest we lost, the only one in our two years of junior high school. I don’t remember the score, but I do remember being devastated. I didn’t think it was possible to lose until then. I cried on the way back to our dressing room.
Jimmy’s letter included a clipping that made the loss, almost a half-century earlier, less painful. The Democrat article described our Colts win over Shelbyville, 27-6. The game was played on a Thursday evening at Alumni Memorial Field, now the site of Sellars Funeral Home that was Lebanon High’s home field until the school moved across town to Harding Drive.
That game was a high point for me. I scored my only touchdown in six years of playing organized football. I remember my feelings quite well. I was excited but sad because my father was in Atlanta at a Pontiac meeting and missed it. Little did I realize, he would never get the opportunity to see me score again (Ironically five years later at Heights, my mother missed the only home run I hit, and my father told her it made them even).
But the article Jimmy sent revealed I had not only scored a touchdown, I set a record for yards covered on a punt return for a score, at any level of the sport.
After describing how Shelbyville scored on a “Statue of Liberty” play towards the end of the first half to narrow our lead to 13-6, the narration captures my record run:
“Early in the second half, Shelbyville punted and Jimmy Jewell returned the kick 447 yards to a touchdown.”
No one, no one, I boast, has ever run FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN yards on a punt return except me. My friend Marty described the run as a twisting, cutting back, reversing the field, slashing, stiff-arming run of Homeric proportion.
Alas, I must confess, the Democrat had a slip up. The “447” yards described as my zenith in any sport was the product of a typo. An extra four had slipped from the linotype machine. My record was not a record. My only touchdown was only a 47-yard return, good but certainly not heroic.
About a month and a half ago, i began trilogy of posts about acquiring my love of the sea.
i posted the first two stories of my third class midshipman cruise aboard the USS Lloyd Thomas (DD 764). Then i rested. Those first two posts centered around how i became insulated against sea sickness. Neither the chief petty officer faking blowing lunch with his mixture of crushed graham crackers and milk in a barf bag nor the tricks of the sailors in rough seas could induce seasickness. My resistance allowed me to never have a problem with seasickness again, not even through the roughest seas, for the rest of my time at sea. Those events gave me a one up on being a mariner.
My real love of the sea was precipitated later in that eight-week cruise. We had been to Sydney, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, and were headed back to Newport in late July somewhere in the middle Atlantic. i had spent my time in deck, operations, and was about three weeks into my five-week stint in engineering.
Engineering was on a four-section watch rotation and did not dog the 18-20 — the dog watches were 16-18 and 18-20, splitting the evening mess and allowing three section watches to rotate through different watches each day; a four section watch would rotate watches without splitting the dog watches into two. The midshipmen were in three sections. i began my engineering tour with the morning watch (0400-0800). Consequently, i stood the morning watch, then put in the 0800-1600 work day immediately followed by the 1600-2000 watches. For five weeks plus, i had a 16-hour workday.
Being young and having no sense at all, i went to the evening movie, shown for the enlisted in the DASH (Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter) hanger aft on the 01 level. Every night. No sense. That gave me about five hours of sleep each day. No sense.
This particular night, the crew’s movie was “The Quiet Man.” i had never seen it, and was entertained and moved by the story. Perhaps that influenced what happened next. The thirty or forty crew members filed out of the hangar deck and headed to their berthing before taps. For a reason long forgotten, i delayed and trailed the exit. i was walking forward across the torpedo deck on the 01 level before heading down the ladder. i was alone. i stopped.
The night was a perfect summer night at sea. The ship was steaming with standard running lights allowing the stars to give off their full glory in the heavens. There was a full moon. It was almost perfectly abeam on the port side. i walked to the life lines and paused.
The Thomas was steaming at 15 knots on a windless night. The roar from the stacks passed over my head and was barely noticeable, but i could hear the swish of the bow waves passing down the port side. The reflection of the moon produced a path of sparkling white from the horizon directly to where i stood.
It likely was no more than a minute or two i stood there. It seemed then, and it seems now it could have been eternity. It was as if the goddess of the sea took her hand from the moon’s path and reached up and grabbed me. There was something deep in my gut, deep in my soul touched by that lady, the sea. She called me. i felt her then. i feel her now.
Oh, i tried to ignore her and the feelings down deep. i spent my obligatory three years after a chequered path to becoming an officer and got out with the intent of being a sports journalist. i only returned because of the financial responsibility of having a wife with a daughter on the way. The need for security. But the feeling from that night on the port side of the Lloyd Thomas never left me.
i spent almost 15 years on sea duty. There were many obligations for a Navy officer, what they eventually marketed as a “Surface Warfare Officer.” Those obligations often distracted from communication with the sea, but the sea never let go, never let go.
i have loved the sea in all of her moods: the calm of the doldrums, the lapping white caps of deep blue at first light, the heat of the water reflecting on a hot summer day in calm seas, the rage of a storm with waves breaking green water on the portholes of the bridge 75-feet from the waterline. And an infinite number of nights with the stars so plentiful, they seemed to run together and the full moon tracing its path to the port side of my ships. And grabbing me deep inside.
If i could go back to sea and drive ships, i would. But technology passing me by and age would not allow such a personal whim.
But the sea. Ahh, the sea goddess. i still love her.