After graduation, I worked at Paragon night shift in the shipping department, while attending the UW Manty campus during the days. My boss was Ralph (Kutzy) Klinkenberg. He encouraged me to explore career options and not to wind up like him, stuck in a dead-end job. So, with a not-so-great set of grades in classes, I signed up for the U.S. Navy and left for Great Lakes in October of 1969. I finished "boot" camp in January and was sent to the Navy's Yeoman (office clerk) school in Bainbridge,MN. There I secretly wished I had taken that typing class in H.S. I did graduate and was assigned to the Torpedo'sman Mate School in Orlando, FL. I was there frm 1970 through 1972 and was then assigned to the USS CHEHALIS (PG-94) in Little Creek, Virginia. We made a weekend visit to the Naval Academy and a 3 month deployment to the Guantanamo Bay. Little did I know then, that GITMO would be more famous today,
Seeing no great prospects back inT'Rivers, I reenlisted and was assigned to Fighter Squadron 31 (VF-31), flying the F-4J Phantom out of the Oceana Air Station in Virginia Beach. VF-31 flew from the USS SARATOGA CV-60 out of Mayport, FL. Two deployments to the Mediterranean later, I was assigned to Fleet HQ in Norfolk, and when time to reenlist again, I was offered Instructor duty at the Yeoman school which has moved to Meridian, Miss. That was a very good tour of duty, and I was then assigned to the USS CONNOLE (FF-1056) in Newport, RI for sea duty in November 1980. I have a set of stories about duty on a Navy destroyer. Two trips to the Caribbean, includng going through the Panama Canal both ways, two trips to the Mediterranean (including the Golf of Sidra when the U.S. shot down 2 Libyan fighter jets, and also into the Black Sea, and one trip to the North Atlantic. In 1984, I was assigned to Great Lakes in the Engineering Systems Schools staff where they trained all the marine engineers. I made Chief Petty Officer while there and then was assigned to Construction Battalion 62 out of Gulfport, MS, and made a deployment to the island of Guam, Marianas Islands, and the next yeat to Sigonella, Sicily. Unfortunately the battalion was decomissioned in 1989 and to finish sea duty, I was assigned to VF-142, the Ghostriders, again at the Oceana Air Station. VF-142 flew the F-41A++ aircraft, predessor of the F-14D. During this tour, while deployed on the USS D.D. EISENHOWER (CVN-69), I was in the Red Sea for Operation Desert Shield. After we stopped Saddam Hussein, and as I was up for shore duty again, the Navy saw fit to send me back to Great Lakes, this time to Recruiting Duty with the Commander of the Midwest recruiters. I finished up my Navy career in 1993 after 24 years on active duty.
Today, I think back to those days of all-expense vacations to garden spots like Beruit, Lebanon, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal. I wouldn't trade it for anything. MH