i’m sitting in Forest Hills overlooking Golden Gate Park and San Francisco. Surprisingly, it is foggy (just kidding about “surprisingly”).

As is my custom, i awoke early, around 5:00 a.m. i’m the only one of the folks in the Hicks’ lovely abode on the hill (what else? Folks, this is San Francisco) who is awake. i’ve completed my morning ablution, made coffee, and sat down in front of this machine rather than doing some stretching exercises i should be doing, vowed to do them later, and forget about stretching well before noon.

The coffee, as is everything in the kitchen of one marvelous Maren Hicks, is really good.

And i am happy. No, i am really excited.

i recently learned some great news about my mother, Estelle Prichard Jewell. i have waited until a couple of news media cleared me announcing it here. They said “okay, but keep it basic.”

So basic it is, at least as basic as old never-write-one-word-when-four-paragraphs-(most of which has nothing to do with the word)-can-be-more-confusing.

The Vanderbilt Women’s Basketball team will honor my mother for her basketball performances at Lebanon High School from 1932 to 1935. i will leave most of the particulars for later. However, she held the Blue Devilette records for points scored in a single game and a season for over a quarter of a century and was one of the inaugural inductees into the Lebanon High School Sports Hall of Fame.

The honors will be made at the Vandy-Tennessee women’s basketball game Sunday, February 3, 2019 in Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gymnasium.

The way it happened, the connections, the memories are bouncing around in my head like a steel ball in a pinball machine gone bonkers. i’m keeping it basic for now but will revisit all of that later.

For now, i wanted to let folks know who might not ordinarily read Vanderbilt’s press releases or The Lebanon Democrat’s newspaper early in order for family and friends who might like to attend — after all, that bunch pretty much covers the entire U.S.A. — early enough for  them to get there.

Last Thursday evening, three couples had dinner at San Diego’s Wine Vault and Bistro.

Pete and Nancy Toennies, Peter and Sandra Thomas, and Maureen and moi enjoyed the three courses of unique  splendid gourmet servings with paired wines. Maureen and i have been there often either by ourselves, with other friends and family, and every once in a while with one of the other couples.  Thursday was the first time with the six of us together.

It was about as good an evening of dining i can remember.

As we savored the food and the wine, we told stories, we shared information, we learned more each other, and we laughed. Oh how we laughed.

All three of the wives are engaging, independent, intelligent, strong women who can tell stories and laugh like nobody’s business. They are all a delight.

As we sat there, i thought of how fortunate i have been in my life. i mean, it’s like my father said, “i have a good wife, great kids and  grandkids (singular for me). i’ve had a good life. All i want now is to go quick” — He was 87 and lived another 12 years, and yes, he went quick.

Although i’m okay with going quick, i’d like to hang around for a while. i’m pretty sure i won’t get near my father’s longevity of just shy of 99 and not even sure i want to. Yet, i would like to spend some more time with my family and my heroes.

Growing up, i had a lot of heroes. Roy Rogers; LeRoy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch; Bobby Lane; Willy Mays; Nellie Fox; Don Hoak; Roberto Clemente (and the entire Pittsburgh Pirate team); Bob Steele; Clifton Tribble; David Robinson; Don Franklin; Tennessee’s Johnny “The Drum” Majors; Vanderbilt’s Phil “The Chief” King; Elvis; Ricky Nelson; on and on; my three uncles, Snooks Hall, Bill Prichard, and Pipey Orr; and of course, my father.

By the time i got to college, i had pretty well got out of the hero mood. There were athletes i admired; there were some friends and others i looked up to, and my male relatives a generation older (yes, i had heroines also, but that is another story).  But i really was out of the hero worship thing.

i lived a life i’m guessing was like many males of my generation. i did some good things, i did some bad things although not intentionally to hurt anyone. i made some good decisions and i made some mistakes that will live with me the rest of my life. To me i was/am no hero. i’m not only fine with that, i prefer it that way. i like to think i’ve lived my life as well as i could and never with ill intent, always trying to do the right thing. i like people and have all my life. i try very hard to never, ever categorize groups of people in any way, good or bad. i’ve seen enough to know there are well-intentioned people and people who lean toward self-interest in every grouping.

But as i have grown (i hope) through my years, i have once again revisited this hero thing. It’s not like my younger years. My heroes are not folks whom i idolize or wish to be like. i am satisfied being in my own skin. But i have met a lot of folks who are my heroes for what they have done in their lives.

The two guys i had dinner with last Thursday are two of my heroes.

i met Pete Toennies in 1979. Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. i think i’ve told that tale before. It was one of the wildest, most successful, most fun deployments in my Navy career (and i had quite a few of those, but this was the best). The two of us (and later, Nancy, who took care of me as well as Pete) ran together, played together, and just had fun.

Pete was an incredible athlete. He was an All-American swimmer at St. Johns, winning, what? six of the ten events he entered in the NCAA tournaments. He was the epitome of a Navy SEAL: 6-7, 220, 4% body fat, and goofier than just about anyone but me. He was fearless. He excelled at any athletic endeavor he took on (okay, okay, maybe not golf). He was a tireless worker, buying small houses, renovating them all by himself, renting, buying more before rolling them over into apartment complexes. A financial success. But more than anything else, he cared. He helped others succeed.

In 1983, we lost track of each other. We briefly connected in the mid-80’s but  for ten years, we just disappeared for a while. The Navy can do that: Surface, SEAL, coasts, deployments, often same places, different times.

But he took a shot and invited me to his retirement in the mid-90’s. i got it. i went. We were back on track and have been close friends ever since, my best friend in San Diego.

Sometime in the mid 2000’s, he and i were discussing a whole bunch of philosophy stuff — that’s dangerous by the way: Pete and i should not talk philosophical — and he said, rather surprisingly to himself and to me — we thought alike. He was right. We don’t agree on everything, but we can talk about the disagreements because we think alike. Good deal.

Pete is one of my heroes.

Peter is also — i call one Pete and the other Peter to keep from getting me confused. Peter Thomas is also an incredible athlete, even in golf. He has run about a gazillion iron man competitions including London, Rome, Paris, and the big one on the Big Island in the early 80’s, finishing second in the military division. Even after hip replacements, he was the U. S. number one in the 50-plus category in Xterra marathon (where it’s an iron man but in cross-country running, off-road biking, and rough water swimming.  As for golf, he won the U.S. all-military European Championship four years in a row and played in the British Amateur. There are a lot more things to list in his athletic achievements, but i’ll save that.

Oh yes, he was a pretty good sailor also. He was a nuclear machinist mate, a diver, good enough to become the 1982 Pacific Fleet Sailor of the Year. He became an LDO when he worked for me as the best Leadership and Management facilitator i ever knew (and i knew quite a few). He rose to the rank of commander as a submarine maintenance officer and, if it hadn’t been for Navy politics, would have made captain (should have). Since retiring, he has been an incredible success running maintenance programs for several military contractors and is now the vice-president of Life Cycle Engineering in charge of submarine maintenance work across the Pacific.

He met his wife Sandra when he was the repair officer on a submarine tender in Holy Loch, Scotland. Sandra is one of my most favorite women on earth. They are perfect for each other.

Pete and i have been involved in leadership training and information since we met in 1985. We share a lot of ideas about what makes a good, effective leader. Several years ago, i asked him what was the one thing he would say was most important to be an effective leader. Peter replied, “Do the right thing.” He’s right.

Pete and Peter have one thing in common: they never lost to me in racquetball from what i remember. i might have occasionally won a game; i don’t remember that happening; but they always won. And we played thousands and thousands of racquetball games.

Yet they are my heroes, not so much because of their success (and they have been successful in athletics, careers, and life) but because they are my friends.

Thank you, Pete and Peter.

i just finished going through Vanderbilt, Summer, 2018 magazine. When i get them, i turn to the “epilogue” section to see if there is someone i knew who has passed away. i knew already, but Albert Noe was listed in this edition. Sad.

 i read the rest of the magazine for a number of reasons.

Just to make sure you know this isn’t under false pretenses, i didn’t graduate from Vanderbilt. i started all right. On a NROTC scholarship, pretty much a full ride, Blew it big time. i finished my undergraduate degree at Middle Tennessee. Got as good as i could get in a BA in literature. Two and a half years of some of the best times of my life. PhD’s Bill Holland and Scott Peck challenged me to rise to academics heights i have never reached before or since but was definitely on a roll then. Vanderbilt. i still went there, socially, you might say.

Vanderbilt was a defining point of my life. i had a lot of fun and probably broke a few drinking records. i also met some of the best people on this planet. They became my friends for life.  i had a lot of respect for them and a lot of guilt for me for flunking out — you may have read this before, but i was within one course of being the first student to flunk out without failing a course. Yep.  i had 16 D’s in four semesters. But in that last semester, the spring of 1964, i flunked statics, an engineering course, majestically. i took it over in the summer and got a D. But that is another story altogether.

Yet i was tied to Vanderbilt. i have tried on several occasions to return. The first was when i had to have a shore tour (bah!). i requested an NROTC instructor billet, fully aware of the irony. i wanted to be in the Vanderbilt NROTC unit, but opted for Texas A&M to get my disgruntled wife on her way to dropping me out of her life like handling a hot skillet barehanded. She was a Texan. Her father was an Aggie. It made sense. But i regretted not going to Vandy and perhaps, perhaps getting a graduate degree while working for the Navy.

Didn’t happen.

Then about a half dozen years ago, i got this idea of getting a graduate degree in writing. Stumbling through the options, the only one was a masters in fine arts for writing. i tried. i was old and what credits i had couldn’t compare to super performing, younger and current applicants.

One of the reasons i thought the old man had a chance is that a recipient of this program would also be required to participate, maybe even be the editor for…yep, the Vanderbilt magazine. Perfect. i thought. Nope, new age stuff doesn’t make an old time editor look good.

Didn’t happen.

Still, Vanderbilt has always had my respect and support. Especially sports (and that’s another story involving Fred Russell and Bob Thiel and Roy Blount and Coach JB Leftwich). i was a huge basketball fan and a distant adjunct to the ’64-’65 team that won the SEC. i loved to sit on the first base hill and watch  baseball on Hawkins Field. i even covered a Vanderbilt-Kentucky freshman football game while working at the Banner.

Except for some random good seasons in basketball and one or two in football, there were some rough years. Then the new age came in. Vanderbilt now has great success in all of the sports and is competitive in the two biggies of college sports, football and basketball.

So i participate in Vanderbilt events for old folks. i’m even a “Quint,” an honor for those whose class was more than a half century ago. i give a few bucks to the athletic program every year.

When i read the magazine after the obits, i am always amazed at the quality of the magazine, the incredibly diverse achievements of the alumni, and the amazing accomplishments and potential great futures of the current students. i’m proud i went there.

In this issue, Mitch Litch wrote an article about Vanderbilt athletics, “Grade A Talent.” Litch captures what i think is most important about Vanderbilt athletics and fostered by David Williams, a rather incredible asset to Vanderbilt athletics who is retiring from his Vice Chancellor of Athletics position next year. As i have noted several times, Dr. Williams endorsed success in athletics at Vandy doing it the right way, the Vandy way.

It is a tough road, this doing it the right way. That means a college student who participates in athletics is integrated into all of student life including academics, a name only thing at a lot of college athletic programs who have sacrificed the “student” part of “student athlete.”

In the middle of the article, there was a quote from Derek Mason, the current — and i hope the long range — coach of the football Commodores:

Our student-athletes have to go across campus and compete against students who don’t really care about their athletic prowess, and then they have to come back and compete against athletes in the SEC who don’t really care about their ACT or SAT scores.

There lies the delicious problem and the beauty of Vanderbilt’s quest in athletics. They are trying to do it the right way. College is upper education. It was not meant to be a contest to see who can win athletic contests by recruiting people only to play sports who are hoping against terribly long odds to make a career as a pro athlete and then keeping them away from solid academics and life on campus with ALL of the students.

So you see i hope Vandy continues the quest to not only succeed in most sports but to succeed in football and basketball as well by doing it the right way, even if it makes it a bit tougher on the student-athlete, and recruiting and competing in the SEC and big time college football and basketball. Vandy has done that in men and women’s sports.

Hopefully, they can do that in these two highly visible sports as well.

And you know what? As long as they are competitive i hope…no, i pray they continue trying to it the right way, the Vandy way, and the way it should be for all colleges and all sports.

i am sitting here in my home office. It is late in the evening.

i should be working on my book. You know, the book about my positive experience with women at sea in the Navy, which never progresses at the speed which i plan, damn near always because i can procrastinate with the best of them and allowed to do so because i have reached that glorious age where it is okay. i should be in bed.

i’m sitting here thinking about logos. Logos? Yeh. Logos.

One reason i’m thinking about logos comes from what i’m wearing. i’m sitting here in the house wearing a ball cap. It just came in the mail. i don’t normally wear my ball caps inside anything. My mother and daddy taught me well.

My Vanderbilt ball caps have pretty much run their course, mostly in the sun of the golf course. So i ordered a new one. It came today. Black. Handsome, the ball cap, not me. It’s on my head in my house.

i’m also wearing my Castle Heights tee shirt. It also is pretty new. My old gray one, looked (and eventually smelled) like it came out of the locker room of that old gym basement. But not this tee shirt. This new one is maroon, with Castle Heights in that Gothic  lettering and the Tiger in gold. i have three Heights ball caps like i did with Vandy’s caps, now numbering four.  i have about twenty ball caps with logos and about six polo shirts with logos. i have the Vandy, Heights, Middle Tennessee, and a Lebanon High School ’62 Football caps. i have a bunch of caps from where i’ve been, like Brenneke’s on Poipu Beach in Kauai. There’s also a couple of Navy SEAL golf tournament hats, and a couple from the USGA. And there is one from Pacific Tugboat Services. In fact, the other piece of garb i’m wearing is a faded blue chambray shirt with a Pacific Tugboat logo on the breast.

In my youth, besides hood ornaments and the tail fins on cars of the fifties, i don’t remember too many logos except the inescapable Coca Cola and a couple of others like Goo Goo candy. i’m sure there were more but i don’t remember any impact they made on me.

Back then, those hood ornaments and one other logo influenced me. When i was accepted to Vanderbilt, one of the first things i bought was a decal to stick to the back window of the family’s 1958 Pontiac Star Chief. i was proud of getting into Vanderbilt.

i also had game and practice jerseys from Heights football. One disappeared during one of about 15 moves during and after my Navy career. The practice jersey, a heavy cotton one (#27) became so ratty Maureen made me throw it out. Then there was a Texas Boot softball jersey (which Sarah still wears). Of course, i wore Navy uniforms for nearly forty years, on and off.

i now have a different idea about logos than most folks’ ideas about logos. For starters, i don’t particularly like them. i definitely don’t like logos of the company on products they sell. i don’t own and never will golf apparel with a logo like Titlelist or Taylor Made or Calloway unless it’s a golf bag from which there is no other option.  i wanted to get rid of the logos on my cars. i figure if i am wearing a logo for a product, i am advertising for that product. So they should be paying me…you know like Tiger and Lebron and Matthew McConaughey. i mean i don’t expect to be paid in the millions or even a thousand, but i think a rebate on the products i use would be proper.

An aside: Do you know how hard it is to find a good shirt without a logo on it?

i also will not wear paraphernalia, including ball caps or jerseys of the team i’m rooting for at sports events. i sure as hell won’t wear paraphernalia with somebody else’s name on it, even like Tony Gwynn. i still have some tee shirts with players’ names from the freebie handouts when i had season tickets to ball games, but generally, i am me, not somebody else, no matter how much more famous they are than me. i don’t want to confuse people by making them think i might have another name. And i don’t wear tee shirts except for working out and home tasks (unless of course i have to make a run to Home Depot or Lowes). And if i go to a sports event, i don’t wish to look like a lemming.

i usually wear my logo stuff where it isn’t worn by everybody else. Like out here in the Southwest corner, i wear Castle Heights, Vandy, LHS 1962’s undefeated team, and Middle Tennessee hats. When i go back home, i wear Padre, Navy SEAL, and Pacific Tugboat hats. i mean if i am back home, everybody there knows this is San Diego with Padres, SEALS, and Pacific Tugboat. And back home, everyone knows Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee and Castle Heights (past tense) and Lebanon High School and UT Chattanooga Mocs.

But tonight, i’m celebrating the joy i have with memories of things i love. So i have my hat on and my CHMA tee shirt and my Pacific Tug shirt. It’s been a good life and my logos help me recall some good times:

At my age, memories fade and confuse. It seems i’ve written about this box before. Don’t care. The real memories, not forgotten and clear came rolling out yesterday.

It’s not much of a box really.

i got it out yesterday to replace a button on my working shorts.

The box is about five inches square, an old haze gray box. In 1975, i found it my new stateroom on the USS Anchorage (LSD 36) when i reported aboard in San Diego to relieve the first lieutenant. Since the guy i was relieving had the first lieutenant’s stateroom, i was put in another stateroom. The temporary was on midship passageway in the after row, the first one on the port side in officer’s country.

Looking back, it seems almost prophetic where i was berthed. It had been the stateroom for the ship’s bosun. i never knew his first name. i imagine him as a balding big man with a deep voice. i do not know why. He left about a month before i reported aboard. He left me in an awkward position.

It was February. The Anchorage was about six weeks from a ten-month deployment to WESTPAC as a ship in Amphibious Squadron Five. i had never been on an amphib; didn’t know squat about them. i considered myself a destroyer sailor and had come from being the chief engineer on the USS Hollister (DD 788) out of Long Beach. But the Navy had decided to share the wealth and introduced split tours for department heads. i went from Destroyer School in Newport, Rhode Island to the Hollister for about eighteen months. Rather than spending three years in that billet, i rotated to an amphibious ship, one of the first department head grads to finish Destroyer school and then split to another type of ship, amphibious, or service force (oilers, ammunition carriers, etc.).

Although i was not enamored with the idea of leaving destroyers, the “greyhounds of the fleet,” i admit i was glad to leave chief engineering behind me. The job of keeping a thirty-year old, abused engineering plant up and running was harrowing to say the least. i was absolutely thrilled when i just missed my goal of holding it together well enough to meet all of her operational commitments. We failed to meet one five-day underway period just before we went into the yards for a periodic overhaul. It was one of my toughest jobs in the Navy.

So as the completely unarmed lieutenant reported to the Anchorage, he was counting on the ship’s bosun to provide all of his knowledge and expertise in maintaining amphibious operations at an acceptable level, at least until i learned more and became more proficient in boats, cranes, well decks, and landing operations.

One problem: the Navy (again) had decided to rotate the ship’s bosun a month before i got there. He left with no replacement.

But he left his little metal box in the small fold-out desk in his stateroom. With a felt-tip pen, he had written his name, “Bosun Holtzclaw,” now faded to almost illegibility, on the top.

When i discovered it the second day aboard, i picked it up and opened it. It was the bosun’s sewing kit. There were some small scissors, about a half-dozen sewing needles of various sizes, straight and safety pins, Navy exchange thread kits wrapped around cardboard, white and Navy blue spools of thread, and about fifty buttons from pea coat size to small uniform buttons for nearly all officer uniforms.

i didn’t have a sewing kit. Convenient. At least the boatswain left me something.

i have many tales about that deployment and my tour aboard Anchorage. Except for a couple of personal setbacks and a shocking abuse of power by the chain of command at the very end of my tour against Art Wright, one of the best commanding officers i had in my career, it was my best tour of my Navy career.

Not known at the outset, we would take part in the evacuation of Vietnam that May. We were chased by typhoons in the South China Sea. We did some rather amazing lifts of cargo and hit some great liberty ports. As first lieutenant, i was in charge of just about everything except engineering and the small Combat Information Center.

i was in charge of all exterior maintenance of the ship (the first commanding officer, Lou Aldana, told me my job was like a farmer’s: when it was good weather, my boatswainmates would work long hours painting and chipping. When it was bad weather, we would be getting ready for the good weather, and  when we had finished, we would start over again).

i also was responsible for the ship’s boats (an LCVP, motor whale boat, and the captain’s gig) as well as the embarked Assault Craft Unit boats, two LCM8’s (70-foot landing craft) and an LCU (120-foot landing craft). The two 60-ton cranes were my responsibility in addition to the flight deck, the mezzanine deck, and the well deck. I was the well-deck master for all boat and cargo operations. i was responsible for all flight operations and the flight deck. i had the gunnery department under my aegis and was in charge of all ammunition storage. Troop berthing (about 600 enlisted berths) were in my bailiwick and being in charge of any troops when they were embarked. There are probably a couple of things under my responsibility i have left out.

i was one of the four Officers of the Deck (OOD’s) underway and Command Duty Officers with 24-hour duty every fourth day. i was the sea detail and general quarters OOD. One load required me on station throughout 42-hours, followed two days later by a 22-hour load, and there were numerous loads twelve hours or longer.

And you know what, it was fun. No, it was a wonderful time to be a mariner, a Navy surface officer at sea. i’ll cherish the memories for the rest of my life.

*     *     *

i am a collector of memories, some might say a third degree hoarder. i have a garage full of stuff from the past, my past. i have an inexpensive glasses holder on my nightstand. My aunt gave it to me for a small Christmas present. I think of Aunt Bettye Kate every night before i go to bed when i use it for my glasses. i have a wine bottle foil cutter my brother and his wife gave me one Christmas. The plastic holder is broken and i have other foil cutters but i always use this one because i think of them when i open a bottle of wine. i have about two hundred photos of my daughters and grandson around the house and garage so it feels like they are with me when i am anywhere in our house. i have my father’s Tasmanian Devil floorboard covers i gave him for his Ford Escape one birthday. Every time i get in my car, i think of him.

That’s just the beginning.

And on a closet shelf, there is this little metal box tucked away for when i have to sew a button on some pants or shorts. Anything more sophisticated tailoring than that i seek out Maureen or even a tailor. At Castle Heights, i had about four or five “bachelor buttons” to use vice sewing on a button: emergency kind of thing. Yep, i have a couple in the metal box that allows me think of the hilltop back a long time ago.

Each time i pull that little metal box out, i think of the man i never met. i wish i had met Boatswain Holtzclaw. i have the greatest admiration for Bosun’s, some of the finest men and capable sailors i have ever met. i suspect some of CWO4 Holtzclaw wore off on me through his little metal box.

i would like to thank him.