i wish to confirm that Marty Linville’s grandmother was indeed a full-blooded Cherokee. Her name was Marquita. After Marty stories, i wish i had met her. This is the second of my stories about my buddy and fellow curmudgeon.
This is one of my favorite stories about Marty. It is a story that could never happen today.
Marty went to Pittsburg State, now a university, to play football. He had been an extremely good quarterback in high school. His coach was an old school football coach named Carnie Smith. Carnie deserved to be called old school. He became the head coach in 1946, two years after i was born. He coached Marty’s father, Big Don Linville.
Don appropriately had the nickname of “Big” as he was huge, about 6-4, 6-5, with hands that would make mine disappear when i shook his hand. He went to Pittsburg State after serving in the Navy during WWII on a submarine. i am still trying to figure out where he could sleep in those cramped quarters. After the war, Don played lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers for a number of years before becoming a teacher because it paid better. He is a marvel of his own.
Before Marty matriculated, this other guy named Rod Stark went to Pittsburg State and played for Carnie Smith as a lineman (Rod is one of the finest golfers with whom i’ve ever played). Carnie, as i have alluded, was old school: three yards and a pile of dust was the game he coached. Marty was a superb quarterback and started his sophomore year (freshmen weren’t eligible until 1972). Carnie had two rules for his quarterbacks: 1) Do not throw a pass inside your 20 yard line, and 2) Do not throw a pass if you are inside your opponents’ 20 yard line.
In his first game as a starter, Marty threw an 80-plus yard touchdown pass. That was inside his own 20 yard line. Carnie took him out of the rest of that game and the next one. On the third game of the season, the Gorillas had driven down inside the opponents 10 yard line. Marty threw a pass for a touchdown. Coach Carnie sat Marty down for the rest of that game and the next one.
Three yards and a pile of dust. Don’t mess with Carnie.
More than twenty years later, Major Marty Linville reported to the Naval Amphibious School, Cornado. Where he met another Pittsburg State football player, Rod Stark, who, at the time, was the Director of Amphibious Training. They had never met previously. They became friends. Their families became close. Their children grew up together, and Marty and Rod played golf together for forty years. i was lucky to be a tag-a-long for thirty-nine of those years.
i didn’t play for Carnie Smith, but i did play for Stroud Gwynn at Castle Heights Military Academy: single wing. Three yards and a pile of dust.
George Phelps was my first commanding officer on the USS Hollister when i reported aboard at the end of November in 1973. It was also my first tour on the West Coast.
CDR George Phelps was a terrific CO and old school. Back then, many COs were stovepiped in their area of previous tours. George had been in operations and weapons for his career. i quickly realized that he was not interested in engineering. That was my job. Once, i actually asked him, rather forcefully considering i was a lieutenant and he was a commander, to go into the forward engine room to see an auxiliary steam pipe that was dangerous due to deterioration. i wanted him to understand the situation when he and i would make our case with the repair folks. It was much like the way merchants operated: The master was overall in charge, but the engineer was responsible for all things in his department. The master did not interfere. i felt that responsibility as a burden.
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CDR Phelps loved to joke. He appointed his three line department heads as element control officers. Bob Coates, the ops boss, was the sun control officer; Mike Moffat, the weps boss, was the rain control officer, and i was the wind control officer. If any of those elements became a problem, we got the blame and were called to task. i loved it.
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We had a command inspection from the squadron staff that covered all areas of ship operation. Each department had a long list of discrepancies. The requirement to report action taken on each discrepancy had put our XO, LCDR Kirk, into a panic. He was beating on all of the department heads to get our corrective action status into him so he could forward them to the staff and up the chain of command. It had become a real hassle trying to get the report in to the XO while still doing all of the other things we had to do…like actually attempting to fix those discrepancies.
One day, in the heat of all of this, the CO related something at the noon mess in the wardroom. He related how a similar thing had occurred when he was XO of the USS McKean (DD 784), and a sister ship in DESRON 27. As XO, Phelps had asked all of the department heads for inputs to a similar report. They, of course, were late. When they all finally were turned into him, the report was already two weeks overdue. He had to write a summary, collate and edit the departments’ reports. That took him about another two weeks. When done, he realized it was over a month overdue. He also realized he had not been dinged by the squadron for not submitting the report. This led him to conclude if he sent it then, he and the ship would catch hell from the squadron for the late submission.
He decided to put the report, ready to go, in his “hold” basket to submit when the squadron asked for it. As he was about to get relieved over six months late and having heard nothing from his superiors about the report, he took it out of the hold basket and put it in what we called “the round file,” that is the burn basket for shredding classified documents.
i love that story. It makes me how many of the thousand of reports i submitted over my career really mattered at all. i keep thinking of Indiana Jones ark being stored in some huge warehouse to be forgotten.
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After the regular overhaul had begun, CDR Phelps called the wardroom together in the wardroom to make plans for his change of command. All went smoothly. The VIPs along with CDR Cornell, the relieving CO, would sit on the ASROC deck amidships facing the starboard side to the pier. Ship’s company would stand in formation behind the seating on the pier for the guests. The reception would be a big event. The seating plan and the procedures were all worked out. It was going to be a wonderful day.
Then the XO, LCDR Kirk, brought up an unpleasant possibility, “What if it rains?” An uneasy quiet hung over the wardroom. Then Mike Moffat, the weapons officer came up with what he thought was a great idea. If it was inclement weather, the change of command could be held at the Naval Reserve Center, which was about a half mile away. The planners started working on the details of the contingency plan when someone asked, “How are we going to get ship’s company to the reserve center?
Moffat again offered what he thought was a brilliant solution. “We can march them there,” he said.
Quiet. Then, a muffled laugh came from CDR Phelps. The muffled laugh led to an eruption of guffaws from the captain, ops, and me. We actually fell on the deck from laughing so hard thinking of what 300 sailors would like marching for half a mile.
Fortunately, it didn’t rain.
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There is one incident for which i will always be grateful i was with CDR Phelps. The overhaul had not begun well. The civilian shipyard was already way behind in its work in the engineering spaces, many of the jobs started were being done sloppily, and the shipyard workers spent more time taking breaks than working.
As CHENG, i was also the overhaul coordinator. i was greatly displeased and voiced my concern to the coordinator for our overhaul from the Supervisor Of Ship Repair (SUPSHIPS), the Navy’s organization responsible for ship’s overhauls, among other things. Things did not improve. i reported daily to the CO about the status and told him of my frustration.
One morning during my report to him after quarters, he told me he had scheduled a meeting in his cabin with the commanding officer of SUPHIPS and our coordinator. Our coordinator was one of the first women officers. She was an engineering duty officer (EDO). She had shocking red hair. i won’t go further with my description.
As the meeting started the SUPSHIPS CO began defending his female officer. He was assuming, i’m sure that i was prejudiced against women in the Navy. My mother and three aunts had spent their entire lives in successful careers. i had the greatest respect for women and still do. But the CO kept going on about how great his coordinator was, LTJG I. M. Devine (i am not making that up).
Finally, CDR Phelps said, “Jim, tell him about what is going on in Engineering.”
i began by turning to LTJG Devine and asking if she recalled my complaints. She nodded agreement. Then i asked her if she had checked them out. She explained she had gotten reports from the lead workers. i then asked her how many times she had been down the ladders to the firerooms and engine rooms to check it out herself. She sheepishly (i think) admitted she had not been down into any of the engineering spaces.
She was replaced that afternoon by her CO.
i cannot ever thank my captain giving me free rein and backing me up.
i wrote a bit about Marty after he passed on July 5. He and i shared war and sea stories for 39 years. These tales were shared with a bunch of other folks most of whom were retired military. There were a few just Marty and i swapped with each other. We went on golf trips together, and we went to a load of Padre baseball games together when i shared season tickets with Jim Hileman. Rod Stark, whom Marty met at the Naval Amphibious School, Coronado before me — Rod was there when Marty reported aboard in 1984; i reported in May 1985. Rod also was a major listener and contributor to our tales. And many others, nearly all golfers, heard a bunch of those yarns as well.
It would be impossible for me to recount them all. However, i decided to honor him with some of the stories by and about him. This is the first of that series.
James Martin Linville was Kansas through and through. His father, Big Don, was a pro football lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1940s, quitting to become a teacher because it paid more money. He taught Marty a lot about football and baseball (more about that later).
Marty spent a good deal with his grandmother, a full-blooded Cherokee in Oklahoma. i was always engrossed when Marty talked about life on the reservation.
Like most boys in those days of our youth, we worked in our summers, usually at manual labor jobs. My friends in Lebanon rode bush hog tractors to clean road sides. Marty and Rod rode tractors in Kansas. I laughed when the two of them talked about days in the hot summer Kansas sun ploying the fields, reaping the hay, and hoisting it into the haylofts. When i confessed i never drove a tractor, that i was assigned to be a grave digger by the City of Lebanon staff because i was too small to drive a tractor, Marty would chuckle his famous deep chuckle.
Two of Marty’s stories about high school sports always amused me. Marty was the catcher for the Kansas American Legion team that won the state tournament. i was the second team catcher for my Lebanon Legion team that went to the state tourney but did not win. The kicker is Marty was the catcher for Mike Torrez. Mike went on to be drafted by the Cardinals before winning 20 games for the Baltimore Orioles in their 1975 World Series championship.
Perhaps the best story from Marty’s high school athletics was in track. Marty made it to the finals of the Kansas state high school track meet in the mile.
Marty told me he finished second. Then he confessed he was lapped by the guy who won it. Jim Ryan was that guy. In case you don’t remember, Ryan was the first high school runner to run the mile in under four miles in 1964. i’d say finishing second was just fine.
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This past Thursday, i was watching the Padres in the middle innings. The Mets pitcher was beind in the count, 3-0, to the phenomenal hitter Luis Arraez. Arraeze watched a straight fastball split the middle of the plate to bring the count to 3-1.
i immediately thought of Marty. For a major league hitter to take a 3-0 pitch never made sense to me. This guy is one of the premier hitters in the majors, and he should hit that fat of a pitch anywhere he wanted to place it. Marty and i would have discussed that for hours…
Several parts of this post have been posted here before or included in one of my weekly columns in The Lebanon Democrat. i have included them here because they are part of my story of my USS Hollister tour as CHENG, 1973-1975.
i was just into the saddle as CHENG when the Hollister began its transition the reserve fleet. She was now a member of Destroyer Squadron Nine, with all of the tin cans also reserve ships. Basically, this meant the ship and engineering in particular would be manned to thirds of the ship’s complement with reserves filling the empty billets one weekend a month and two weeks of active duty for training (ACDUTRA).
As earlier noted, Engineering went from a grunch of master and senior chiefs to on BTCM. Period. And one third of the department was transferred. The big problem was there was a fuel shortage for the regular active duty ships. Due to many operational obligations, the reserve ships were going to sea like 37 days per quarter, a high rate.
After i had gone through all of the engineering spaces, i realized the good ole ship had been beaten up in the high tempo and combat duty in Vietnam. My predecessor’s fixes applying casts for broken bones to fix auxiliary steam leaks were everywhere, requiring standard fixes. Leaks of lubricants, water, and fuel was rampant. The bilges were shiny with oil.
It was early in 1974 when i came up with my goal, which was to get the engineering plant to Regular Overhaul in September without missing an operational commitment or getting anyone killed or injured.
We did that except for one final operational underway a couple of weeks before we entered the yards. i’m proud of that.
But we had problems, unique in many ways, through that eight or nine months. That spring, i put my troubles behind me, i thought, as we headed to Pearl Harbor on the Hollister’s two-week ACDUTRA cruise. This is when the reserves assigned to the ship boarded and gave us almost a complete complement of crew. However, many of the reserve snipes were not qualified to stand many watches and a few were downright dangerous if left alone. So we were still essentially steaming with two thirds of an engineering department. We arrived in Pearl with no problems.
i was ecstatic, not just because we had only minor problems, but i was taking leave while we were there. My wife, Kathie was bringing our daughter Blythe, about three months shy of three, with her. We had reserved a cabin on the inshore side of Fort DeRussy on Waikiki Beach. It was a wonderful week.
My leave prevented me from attending a squadron picnic, which included the British ship, HMS Jupiter (F-60), which had joined us for exercises on our transit west. Among the attendees was the Jupiter’s communications officer who just happened to also be Lieutenant Prince of Wales, now King Charles III. Our comm officer, LTJG Wendell Parker, met the prince at the picnic. They t and talked about the comms during the exercises and joked around with each other. Right after the two ships got underway, Jupiter continuing west for Hong Kong, and Hollister heading east for home port, the two exchanged wire notes:
Wire Note Commo to Commo LTJG W.E. Parker to LT, Prince of Wales ITS BEEN A REAL PLEASURE KNOWING AND WORKING WITH YOU AND YOUR RADIOMEN. WISH YOU GOOD COMMS UNTIL YOU REACH HOMELAND. BUT IN CASE THINGS DON’T GO AS WELL AS THEY HAVE IN THE PAST WEEK, REMEMBER: YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME, SOME GET RAINED OUT, AND SOME SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN SCHEDULED IN THE FIRST PLACE, BUT YOU HAVE TO SUIT UP FOR THEM ALL. UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, GODSPEED. BT
The Prince’s response:
TO: W.E. PARKER FROM: LT. PRINCE OF WALES THE COMMUNICATIONS HAVE BEEN A SENSATION. MANY CONGRATULATIONS AND MAY WE SEND APPRECIATION FOR MANY EXCELLENT FORMATIONS CONCLUDED DURING OPERATIONS HIGHLIGHTING THE COOPERATION BETWEEN TWO NAVAL NATIONS. IN ENGLAND WE ALWAYS GET RAINED OUT. BEST OF LUCK. BT
My wife and daughter flew back to LA, and i reported on board to find a big problem.
The main evaps, our distilling plant to make water, had quit. No water, not feed water for the boilers, nor fresh water for the crew.
Or at least not much as the smaller plant in the after engine room didn’t produce to provide both on its own. As i recall, the main evaps was rated to produce 700 gallons per hour. When it was running effectively, it could put out over 720 gallons per hour. The smaller evaps was rated to put out 120 gallons per hour. Once we knew the smaller evaps were in working order and could produce enough water to give us feed water for the voyage back to Long Beach, we got underway with the rest of the squadron.
It was tough going. i was up for about three days, catching a bit of sleep when i could. i spent hours in the hole listening to my remaining master chief machinist mate explaining what they were finding and what the next action would be. i would sit in the log room checking the hourly measurements of the feed and fresh water and reporting to the bridge the status. Our captain, CDR George Phelps would relay four “SITREPS” (situational reports) daily to the commodore on our flagship.
As it was, we were on water hours for almost four complete days before the master chief and his boys got the big evap running again. Our captain sent a flashing light message to the commodore on the destroyer flag ship reporting we were going off water hours. The commodore responded, “Congratulations to CHENG. Please remain downwind for the next couple of days.”
The pastor who married us forty-one years ago just left with his wife to catch a plane back to New England. My brother Joe and his wife Carla have been here since Friday. Their daughter Kate, son-in-law Conor and children, Leo, Oona, and Niamh, came the next day. i gave the men a tour of Navy ships and we joined the women in Coronado on Sunday, and yesterday, we went to the zoo. Great fun. This old man is tired.
So today, often filled with celebratory dinners, will be quiet, rest, reflection, and turning the house into a two person affair. That affair has be going on for longer than 41 years, but that wedding my brother performed was forty-one years ago today. We will have a quiet small dinner and an upscale one later this week.
i won’t belabor the subject here. i will just repeat the great story i’ve told many times about how we met:
It was early March 1982. i was the Weapons Officer of the USS Okinawa (LPH 3) home ported in San Diego. The Weapons Officer billet was titled “First Lieutenant” on other amphibious helicopter carriers. Regardless, it meant i was charge in pretty much everything not aviation, engineering, operations, or supply related.
One of those responsibilities was being in charge of the quarterdeck where all visitors entered the ship. From previous regimes, we had a large red torah that spanned the entrance into the helicopter deck below the flight deck. It was impressive, but Captain Dave Rogers called me to his cabin one afternoon. “Jim, I want our quarterdeck to be the best quarterdeck on the base. I want it to be the most impressive and known to be the best by everyone home ported here.”
I, of course, replied, “Aye, Aye, Sir!”
i discussed how we could make the quarterdeck renowned across the waterfront with my division officers and Boatswain Warrant Officer 4 (CWO4) Ellis. The Bosun had a bit of a beer gut. He was married to a wonderful Filipino woman who created a lovely macramé lanyard for the boatswain pipe the bosun gave me when i was transferred. She was about 4’8″ and almost that wide. Great lady, just a bit wide.
My team came up with the idea of a sitting area next to the quarterdeck. At the time, when guests or visitors came aboard, they had to wait for the watch to contact whomever they were there to see. That sailor or officer would have to come to the quarterdeck to escort the visitor. Often, the time it took to get to the quarterdeck was lengthy.
So we decided we could create a sitting area with panels, some chairs, maybe a sofa, and hang framed photographs about the Oki on the walls. That way, the visitor wouldn’t have to stand around in the working bay of the helicopter deck. Great idea.
We had to decide where and how to get panels. Since the Bosun and his first class were going to make a supply run Friday, the next day, i asked them to check out panels while they were on their run. Liberty call was early and the Bosun and his first class left around 1300. They were dressed in their standard liberty civies. The Bosun had on Levis with a blue tee shirt with his thick black hair combed back as much as it could to resemble a ducktail. His first class had on his biker’s jeans, white tee shirt with a leather jacket and a silver chain dangling down from the jeans. He had straw blond hair also combed back and the gap of a missing tooth was the final touch. They left for their mission.
i had a bunch of paperwork to work through and continued on after liberty call. The bosun came into the office with several boxes of toilet paper (i never understood why he didn’t get it through supply).
“i didn’t think you would be coming back to the ship, Bosun,” i remarked.
“Well, i didn’t want to keep this stuff at home over the weekend,” he replied.
“Did you find any panels?”
“Well sir, we went to Dixieline (a local lumber and home center). They didn’t have them, but they told us to go to Parron-Hall.”
“Parron-Hall?” i puzzled.
“Yes sir. They’re an office furniture place downtown across from the county admin building. We went there, but that place was way too classy for us. They had desks in the showroom worth more than my house.
“You are gonna have to go down there and see about them panels.”
“Aww, come on, Bosun, i have a lot on my plate.”
“No sir, you are gonna have to go down there. It’s on Ash Street.”
Then he added, ” You know sir, the woman who waited on us was really pretty. i noticed she didn’t have a ring on her finger. i’m pretty sure she’s single.
“And she’s way too skinny for me.”
Epilogue
Wedding Day 1983
Midday on the next Monday, i drove down to Parron-Hall Office Materials. i asked the receptionist to see the person who had given her business card to Bosun. i stood at the entrance to the showroom. Maureen came walking across the show room with the sun shining in the window behind her (think Glenn Close in “The Natural,” only prettier). She claims i had my piss cutter on my head. That, of course, is not correct: i am a country boy from Lebanon, Tennessee raised correctly by my parents, Army ROTC at Castle Heights, a Naval career and, by the way, an officer and a gentleman. My hat was off.
We had numerous discussions about the panels, which required about four or five “business” lunches over the five or six weeks for the panels to arrive. When the deal was done, i asked for that date to see John Lee Hooker at the Belly Up Tavern. We attended several events over the summer including sailing with JD in the “Fly a Kite” race where we became (or at least JD became) a legend. We went out to dinner too many times to count.
Then, on July 30, 1983, we were married in her father’s backyard.
Thank you, Maureen, for being you and putting up with me for all of these years. You are my treasure i found (thanks to Bosun Ellis) while looking for office panels. i’m sure you did not think we would be together for 41 years. i still can’t believe my luck has been that good.
