{"id":5131,"date":"2014-03-12T22:02:17","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T05:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/12\/meanwhile-69-years-ago\/"},"modified":"2024-03-12T10:09:44","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T17:09:44","slug":"meanwhile-69-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/12\/meanwhile-69-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, 69 Years Ago . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Enlistment Day<\/a>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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud to say that I served in the United States Navy in the early 1960\u2019s. 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.<\/p>\n

I went to Navy \u2018A\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s aircraft communications and navigation gear.<\/p>\n

I left active duty to work in aerospace and defense, but remained in the Inactive Naval Reserve until I was discharged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,26,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-nostalgia","category-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5131"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7597,"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5131\/revisions\/7597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}