The Alpha and Omega of My Navy Career

THE ALPHA AND OMEGA OF MY NAVY EXPERIENCE

Jack Duncan

Upon enlisting in the Navy in Bakersfield at the Recruiting Office in the basement of the old Post Office, finally when Chief Boatswain's Mate Frank B. Wilson got through with my lengthy preliminary paperwork, he put me on a bus for L.A. on August 14, 1942.    Frank had been recalled to active duty after retiring from 30 years on active duty beginning with Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet 'Round the World Cruise.  I had seen a photo of him riding a camel at the Great Pyramid in Egypt.  The exact memories of a 17-year-old are long-erased, but somehow I got from wherever the bus took me to the Naval Reserve Center at Chavez Ravine.

Miles away from the coast, in a narrow canyon near what is now Dodger Stadium, generations of navy and marine reservists were trained to fight a war at sea. The Navy and Marine Reserve Center, located in Chavez Ravine near Echo Park, opened just before World War II with a radio tower, basement pool and a football sized “drill deck” equipped with a torpedo sight, 5-inch cannon and  a 40mm anti-aircraft gun that reservists would find on a battleship. Decades after the last military reservists received training, the former armory, still equipped with cannon and anti-aircraft gun, has been nominated to become a city cultural historic landmark.

Why would  a Navy armory and reserve center be built so far from the sea?  Because it would be “inconspicuously nestled in the hills where raiding bombers in a possible attack by enemy air forces will be least likely to damage it,” a Navy official was quoted as  saying.

Omigosh, typing my paperwork with me sitting right alongside him was a real movie star.  He was a yeoman (clerk-typist) and a petty officer.  I was aghast as the beginning of a long Navy career was to start with such a flair!  Richard Denning himself.

Denning was born as Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger, Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. He became an actor, best known for his recurring starring roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. In later life, he had a recurring role as the fictitious governor of Hawaii, Paul Jameson, in the CBS television crime drama series, Hawaii Five-O (1968–1980), starring Jack Lord.   According to Denning, his military service during World War II in the United States Navy, effectively disrupted his acting career, and after his discharge from military service it would be another year and a half before Paramount Pictures offered Denning any more acting work. During that time period, Denning and his family lived in a mobile home that he alternately parked at Malibu and Palm Springs. His period of unemployment ended when he was hired to star on the radio opposite Lucille Ball in My Favorite Husband.^[3] Denning later appeared in several 'B' crime drama films before starring in a number of science fiction and horror films. In 1957, he began the first of what would become a steady series of television appearances, usually as a supporting character, though he did star briefly in two television dramas, The Flying Doctor (1959), and Michael Shayne (1960–61).

With such an auspicious start, what was possibly the omega of things Navy almost had to be "over the top."  And it was with the cutting my 90th birthday cake assisted by the Commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet and the Secretary of the Navy aboard the guided missile cruiser, USS Chosin.  June 5, 2015.

Arranged as a surprise by the all-volunteer crew of the PT658 during Fleet Week of the June 2015 Portland Rose Festival and Vice Admiral Kenny Floyd whom I'd met the year before, the whole thing totally surprised and shocked me no end.

http://www.savetheptboatinc.com/

My Marvelous Marlene had been in on the surprise for weeks without giving me a hint.  I believed that the crowning glory was that the crew had pulled strings just to get us an invitation to the Admiral's Reception.  I had kept many of my Navy assignments secret from her and she did a superb job on this one keeping it from me!

Then to have the Admiral call me front and center to introduce me to the assembled crowd of 200 to 300 VIPs and to SecNav Ray Mabus was beyond belief.  When SecNav slipped me a challenge coin during the introductory handshake, came another shock for an old knuckle-draggin' Cannon Cocker. 

Totally as aghast as at the movie star who did my paperwork when I was fresh out of Miss Mary Virginia Owen's East Bakersfield High School homeroom, I was ushered by the Admiral and Secretary into the hangar deck where a large cake sat. 

Mary Virginia finally married George DeArmond and their kids became successes, I'll add parenthetically.  But that's another story.

Admiral Floyd handed me the sword, asked me not to cut him with it and the duo thankfully guided my trembling hand as we ceremoniously sliced the cake to the accolades of the multitude.

Handshakes were offered by hordes of people with stars on their shoulder boards or eagles on their collars.  The wife of a Canadian Navy ship's captain even planted a kiss on my left cheek.  I know it's hard for non-veterans to grasp, but it's even tougher for the veterans to realize that it would ever happen to a mere enlisted man.  Thanks to digital cameras, there's proof.

My own chin was bruised for a week afterwards due to my jaw hitting the deck so many times as event after event unfolded.

Now, with 18 years in grade as a Master Chief, I had had many adventures with the "brass" while serving Navy Captains and even "raising" young JGs up to become two-star Admirals, but after being retired for 30 years to receive this recognition -- might I express a not-too-subdued WOW?  This was beyond belief.

When Annapolis grads, nicknamed "Ring Knockers," might knock their class rings, I could knock my own Fresno State graduation class ring as not being too much of lower caste member of the Goat Locker.  Yet, Ray Mabus was the first SecNav upon whom I'd ever laid eyes, let alone receive a challenge coin as well as an assist with cutting a cake!

My retirement had been underwhelming.  I was a Reservist, serving in a Pacific Fleet billet on active duty.  The Navy Reserve didn't know me; I didn't belong to the active unit, either, so I had just "left the building" after 43 years, took off my blue suit in exchange for mufti and gone to work as a Department of the Navy instructor at Fleet Training Center, San Diego.  Maybe there might have been a handshake or two; that's it.

Much later, I did receive an honor along with a flag by an NJROTC unit that was much appreciated. 

And while a lot of this is repetitious, you've seen it before, this is a summation and the beginning of another of The Many Mini Tales of an Old Dry Frog that make up the story of my life -- so far.