Dad's Birthday - February 7th

Time got away from me these last couple days. Paul is visiting this week and his daughter, Lauren, flew in from Atlanta for the weekend before starting a new job. Then, of course, the Super Bowl intervened - Who Dat! What a great game. Then today I spent much of my time researching the the history of air traffic control in the Navy. It's very interesting - and I'm sure at some stage you'll be exposed to some of what I've learned. Anyway, I remembered Dad's birthday last night, but too late to put out a post. So, without further ado. . .

 

 This picture of Granddad with Paul's daughter, Lauren, was taken over the Christmas holidays in 1970. Paul was recently back from Vietnam, and I had just gotten home from Adak. Lauren was eight months old, and the first grandchild. She really had it good with eight aunts and uncles and no cousins to share them with.

This one of Granddad and David was taken here in Austin, but I'm not sure whether it was at our house on Howerington Circle or the one on Marsh Drive. I'll take a stab at it and say Christmas, 1983, on Marsh Drive.

Ditto this one of Granddad and Lisa. Again, no guarantees on which house or holiday. We can only do what we can do.

This one of Granddad and Nicolette is certainly at Inks Lake State Park, and I'll take a guess that Nicolette, born in November 1982, is about one year old. That means the picture was probably taken in September or October 1983 or the following May 1984. Your choice.

And this last one of Daniel and his grandfather was taken at Dad's home in Grand Prairie. But the time is only another guess. If Daniel's six months old, it's Christmas 1983, but if he's 18 months old, it's Christmas 1984. You decide.

Naval Station Adak, AK

In December 1969 I left the rattlesnakes and prickly pear of South Texas and traded them in for the williwas, whiteouts, and tundra of the Aleutian Islands. (This post is over a month late - December 19th should have marked the 40th anniversary of my arrival in Adak. But this is a fairly slack ship I'm running these days. Sorry 'bout that.)

 

Since I had to leave the Inferno and our wild weekends on Padre Island, I took 30 days leave and visited friends in Coral Gables, FL, Asheville, NC, and Mundelein, IL on my way north. As usual, the family back in Austin got short shrift when it came to my deciding where I was going to spend my leaves. ACCM Kuhn had offered to let me finish my enlistment in Kingsville, but I was young, ready to try something different (and possibly ungrateful). The result of such recklessness was a set of orders to Adak.

When I arrived and checked into the division, the section leader decided to see right off the bat whether I knew how to run a GCA. I also think he wanted to show me that things were going to be a little bit different in the far north. Probably the biggest difference was the amount of traffic. In Kingsville we had had three oversized training squadrons of F-9 Cougars, but in Adak we had a single Patrol Squadron (about 6 or 8) P-3 Orions. They spent such long hours patrolling the North Pacific that our average traffic was only one or two airplanes a day. But I was to find out on that first GCA  run that even one plane a day could be interesting.

So, when that day's P-3 returned to land, Trip (AC1 TJ Triplett) and I hastened to the GCA trailer, grabbed headsets, and sat down to work it in. With little or no difficulty I got the Orion established on course and on glide path for what was essentially a 15 mile straight-in. Piece of cake! Trip had few comments for the first 11 1/2 miles, then said, "Get ready." As my "blip" passed the 3 mile range mark and just before the Orion it represented crossed Zeto Point (a peninsula that crossed the final approach course at 90°), trip told me, "turn him starboard 30°." I had just enough time to say "What?" before I was astonished to see the P-3's echo suddenly veer left, off course by about - let's see - 30°. Trip keyed his microphone, and turned the plane back to the right in time to salvage the approach, then let me finish it up. The point of the exercise was to impress on me that no matter what else was going on, there was a windshear at 3 miles - always - every time - that I could "take to the bank." It worked. I never had a problem with that the rest of the time I was there.

I found these last three pictures (below) online and probably shouldn't post them since they're not mine, but they illustrate my year on the island so well I'll chance it.

 

This first one shows the Reeves Aleutian Airways terminal at the Adak Airport with the DC-6 parked on the ramp. After being on the island for a few months I started working for Reeves in my off time, loading and unloading freight, and reconfiguring the airplanes as the occasion demanded to carry cargo or passengers. On one such occasion I reconfigured the plane for cargo while enroute to Shemya AFB at the end of the Aleutian chain. It occurred to me after a brief stop at Amchitka Island - where the AEC conducted underground nuclear testing - that I had not gotten Navy permission to leave Adak, which made this the only time in my Navy career that I was AWOL. We picked up our cargo at Shemya and I made it back to Adak that afternoon without being found out.

This picture shows the civilian crab boats at Finger Bay. Trip was on his third or fourth Adak tour while I was there, so he was the closest thing to a native there was. He'd been around so long that he'd actually become the agent for the crab fishermen, offering work on the processing boats to wives of sailors stationed on the island. Extra cash for the families of the sailors made converts of many. A serendipitous aspect of Trip's moonlighting was that we often had King Crab on hand for feasts at the GCA unit.

This last picture, shot from the window of an aircraft on approach over Sweeper Cove, shows the ATC Division's party cabin overlooking the Cove (lower right-hand corner on the cliff below the small peninsula). When we partied, we'd spend much of a day drinking Oly (Olympia Beer) and/or Jack Daniels while watching sea otters playing below the cabin's picture window.

The base eventually closed; the Navy moved out and turned over all its assets on the island to some commission hoping to establish an economy that could support commercial enterprises. I check back online occasionally to see if there's still life on Adak and, though I have no desire to return for a visit, look back on my year there with a certain amount of fondness.

Random Portraits

Well, it occurred to me that these aren't really random portraits, since I've taken them from a group of preselected photographs that I, for one reason or another, thought had merit. Let's just say that they are uncategorized, in the sense that some of the other posts are siblings, or cousins, or brothers-in-law. But rather than change the title of the post - and the preceding posts which shared the title - let's just redefine the term "Random Portraits" for our purposes to mean a subset of pictures from my "Favorite Portraits" folder that may be, but are not necessarily, in a roughly chronological order - which allows me to simply choose the next three or four for a post, skipping one or two occasionally to keep from having one subject for the whole group.

Does any of this make any sense? Does anyone care? Never mind. Those are rhetorical questions.

This was Lauren at home in Arlington at Thanksgiving in 2002. She's grown up so much in the last seven years it's hard to remember her at this age.

This picture of Gillian and her thoroughbred Summer was snapped in the spring of 2002 at Summer's second home just across the Cobb/Paulding County line. It was a lovely farm that this photographer appreciated, but that wasn't quite as convenient as her first home, just over the hill from Gillian's. What strikes me most about this picture is how tall Gillian had become since she acquired Summer.

I like this picture of Natalie, taken in May 2002 during our family reunion at the Crooked Hole Ranch in south Texas. I used the picture when I created a birthday card for her 10th birthday.

This one of Mary was taken during that same reunion weekend, but this one is poolside at the Inn on the River. I like the lighting in this one. The direct sunlight hasn't blown out the shot - and Mary kept her eyes open, which isn't always the case.