I cannot remember the day this photo was taken. My Mother dressed me up in a sailor suit and took my picture with her little Kodak Brownie camera on the front lawn of our Long Beach, California home. I think I was about a year and a half old at the time. I think the little stuffed animal I was holding was named “Buster” by my Dad after he returned from his World War 2 US Naval deployment to the Mediterranean in 1945.
Of course, I enlisted in the US Navy in 1960 at the age of seventeen. It was in the Naval Reserve and I did not go on active duty until 1962. I was released from active duty in June of 1965 and discharged from the Naval Reserve in 1966 after a three-year hitch with the discharge rate of third-class petty officer.
I’m proud to say that I served in the United States Navy in the early 1960’s. When I joined, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the Oval Office. When I mustered out, it was after the Cuban Missile Crisis, after JFK had been assassinated, and while President Lyndon B. Johnson was busily escalating the war in Vietnam.
I went to Navy ‘A’ School in Memphis, Tennessee to be an avionics technician; after completion of school (I was first in my graduating class), I reported for duty to the U.S. Naval Missile Center, Point Mugu, California. When I first reported to the air station, I was assigned to a security infantry detail on the base – NEGDF (Naval Emergency Ground Defense Force). It was half intensive training and half security guard duty, complete with hard helmets, leggings and sidearms and M-1 Garand rifles.
After my security assignment was over, I was an air crew member, primarily as radar and radio operator for transport and patrol aircraft. I flew on missile test launch aircraft and also on other missions over the Pacific Missile Range. One mission transported a target remote operating platform to Holloman AFB, New Mexico in an old Douglas DC-4 (Navy R4D – Navy three seven two eight niner). When not on a mission, I worked in the avionics shop, maintaining the command’s aircraft communications and navigation gear.
I left active duty to work in aerospace and defense, but remained in the Inactive Naval Reserve until I was discharged.
This Veterans Day, I would like to remember our two very special veterans. My Dad, Jack and Verna’s Dad, Bill. Both of them are gone now, but we remember and thank them for their service and for their devotion to their families. 
