I served six years on active duty and another two and a half in the drilling reserves while finishing my Bachelor's degree . Almost five years were spent on a nuclear submarine, the USS Hawkbill, doing things that I'm sworn in writing and oath not to tell anyone about. It's been 20 something years and I still haven't told anyone the things we did, (I'm in the Veteran's of Foreign Wars, if that is a clue!) not even my wife. If the SecNav reads this could you let me know it will be okay to tell her. I am incredibly proud of the contribution and continuing strong military service of my family to our country.

I joined the Navy following tradition in my family. My Grandfather and Great Uncle were both in the Navy during WWII and my brother, a Navy Lt and aviator, was in the Navy during the same years that I served. My father was an Air Force pilot in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) after the Korean conflict in the height of cold war activities. I think the crazy war hawk Curtis Lemay was Dad's boss. Dad flew B-47 bombers and my brother flew the Navy's A-6 attack fighters. My grandfather was a radioman on the USS Geneva and my uncle was a surgeon. In previous generations there has always been a member of the family serving our country's military going back as far as the Pequot Indian Wars and Captain John Oldham.

For me in the first year and a half of my Navy service, it seemed like every two months I was headed to somewhere else!–Orlando, Chicago, Norfolk, Orlando again, Pearl Harbor, Groton Connecticut, Bangor Washington and then back to Pearl Harbor for the final four and a half years.

The first two months were in sunny Florida during the months of December, January, and February for a luxurious vacation called boot camp. This was followed by a real shocker for a good ol' Southern boy. I spent two more luxurious months at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago on Lake Michigan learning how to be a mechanic or in other words a machinist mate-my rating specialty. Then my orders were to Norfolk, VA and the USS Piedmont (AD-17) a repair tender ship. I can remember leaving Chicago where it was leafless, grey, and dreary and flew to Charlotte to visit my mom and family. Charlotte in April was so green and beautiful. That has to be one of the greenest days I can remember!

Hanging out with my brother
I spent the next two months assigned to the USS Piedmont waiting for orders to Nuclear Power School basically keeping out of everyone's way, dodging salt hardened sailors, spending my spare hours at Virginia Beach and the Navy golf courses almost living in a 64 1/2 Ford Mustang that used to belong to my grandfather. During this summer, I was also able to spend what would unknowingly at the time become the last real time to hang out with my brother. That summer my brother, as a midshipman at the University of Virginia, was in Norfolk for the summer doing various midshipman things including spending time on a nuclear submarine for several days if not weekly operations.

In September, my orders to the Navy's nuclear power school in Orlando came through. I was headed back to Florida again, and just in time for the winter season! I spent the winter months in a training program heavy in physics, trigonometry, chemistry, with a bit of nuclear theory as applied to a steam plant thrown in for good measure. After nuclear power school, I scored with orders to a ship homeported in Pearl Harbor after requesting a ship out of Norfolk, Charleston, or Mayport, FL. Not to complain a bit....it seems the Navy always gives you orders to the opposite of what you want. Anyway, the ship was a destroyer called the USS Richard S Edwards DD-950. Once again, I only spent a short time assigned to the duty station. (The Edwards was a war worn tin can, a survivor of Korea and Vietnam with two engine rooms full of numerous 1200 psi steam leaks). I was only on the "Ready Eddie " for two months.

The big life altering accident
I bought a motorcycle while in Hawaii to get around to all the beaches thinking it was more practical than a car. (With my dad's help I had purchased a brand new 1980 mustang when I was stationed at Nuke school never considering I would get orders to an island somewhere where cars weren't needed. Dad sold it for me and that's why I now owned a motorcycle on the island.) One day the Edwards was heading to Hilo, on the big island, for the Merry Monarch Festival. The ship had been invited to participate in the festival and we were to get there as a dependent's cruise takign family members down there. I took my motorcycle to a base convenience store to buy coca-colas for my shipmates and me to enjoy during the short eight hour cruise to Hilo. I never made it back to the ship. I was hit by a car on the way back to the ship and woke up in the army's pink palace over looking Honolulu. The hospital was called Tripler Army Medical Center. Between there and a Naval medical rehabilitation unit, I spent a year recovering from my injuries- a patella femural tracking problem and lacerations to the right zygomatic arch. Which means my knee was ripped up and injured and my face was cut.

With the great Army and Navy doctors I had, one could never tell that I have a two inch scar under one of my eyes and a damaged knee. As far as my knee goes I ran a couple of marathons within four years of the accident. The orthopedic physician was at a MASH in Vietnam and put me to shame intimidating me with stories to make me work out (I'm OK now!). Get this– he had me playing tennis against a backboard to develop knee mobility which later turned into full scale running.

While in the naval medical unit, I was able to convince the Commanding Officer that I deserved orders to submarine school in Groton, Connecticut when I was found fit for duty. It worked!

Back to the mainland
I flew to home to Charlotte, North Carolina, and bought a small used 4 wheeled Honda Accord, and drove up the east coast to Groton, Connecticut for submarine school. After two months in school I received orders to go back to Hawaii to meet a new boat, the USS Hawkbill SSN-666. But my return to Pearl Harbor was delayed.

The Hawkbill was in overhaul still in Bangor, Washington and Bremerton Washington's Navy Ship Yard. The reactor was being refueled and some other exciting things were being done to the boat, like being refitted to go under the polar ice cap.

On the way to meet the boat I did my first cross country trek. With my youngest brother and a friend of ours from our highschool Charlotte Latin School we drove a little honda accord I had bought across the lower part of the country. At the Grand Canyon we took a straight shot north through Utah and Zion & Bryce Canyon National Parks to the Snake river in Idaho Falls. From there we went a little east to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons National Parks and then northward to Glacier National Park and Waterton Lakes Park in Alberta, Canada before finally ending at the Pacific where we drove my little car on the beach and damn near in the Pacific Ocean. My brother Harry and Charlie had never been to the Pacific ocean before. We were visiting all kinds of sights that summer that only 19 and 20 year olds can imagine and 45 year olds can only wish for again. (But that is another story.)

I spent that summer and fall in Seattle and the Puget Sound where the highlights would be climbing mountains in the Olympic Peninsula and down at Mt. Ranier, riding the Puget Sound car ferries to Seattle exploring, and driving up to Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Little was I to know my sister Virginia would move to Seattle many years later and I would hike those same mountains again.

The USS Hawkbill made it's maiden run all over the straits of Juan de Fuca between the lower 48 and Alaska doing every type of test you can imagine. Favorite ports were Nanaimo, British Columbia and someplace where the boat was tied to a tether on each end while half the crew was able to go on liberty. I went to see the Rolling Stones, J Geils Band, and Heart in a concert. We then went down the west coast stopping in Alameda (near SF) and San Diego before heading off to our new home port of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

As we approached Hawaii again, we did an emergency surface manuever off of Waikiki to announce our return to the Island. (Sounds like what the USS Greenville did 20 years later and to a Japanese fishing boat). The Hawkbill had been previously homeported at Pearl Harbor for many years and it was going home to the same submarine squadron for the boat too.

That first year back in Hawaii, I did all the Navy boy things that young sailors would do when stationed in Hawaii. We worked tropical hours from 6 a.m. until 1 p.m. while in port and headed to the beaches as fast as we could while only coming back to our dorms to shower and change clothes before heading to Waikiki for the evenings. Fortunately for our livers we were out at sea most of the time.

We worked 6 hours on and 12 hours off while out at sea. The 12 hours off was spent working, performing maintenance to our equipment, learning submarine systems to qualify for our dolphins, eating, reading, sleeping and of course all this when not doing all hands drills.

How a sailor saves for a rainy day
Fortunately we were out at sea most of the time and were usually so dead tired upon entering port it only took a couple of kamikazis and pitchers of long island ice teas to have had our fill. This fact along with spending a lot of time at sea enabled us to save our pay checks from a lot of damage. Not that the pay checks were that darn big!

A very interesting thing happened back then that probably changed my life. After about a year of hanging out in Waikiki and Honolulu I got tired of all the carrying on and staying out all night. Along with some crew mates we started distance running. I ended up running a lot of running races out there. Some races were as a relay team member with other submariners and some races were run by myself. The best and most beautiful was probably the Kole Kole pass half-marathon. It was about 2 miles up a mountain and then down the other side to the beaches near Makahilo on the windward shore. It was really pretty run in a non developed part of the island.

Investing tips for submariners
At the same time, settlement money I had received from being hit by the car earlier, was invested in the stock market in equities. The stock market was beginning the run that still continues. The DOW was under 1000 and beginning to go like crazy.

The late edition of the Honolulu Star Bulletin always had the final NYSE reports and usually red headlines touting the new high in the market. It was just spectacular! (You have to know that my Alabama grandparents taught us about the stockmarket and shooting dice) as kids.
I would go out and run a couple of three miles and end up at the base library reading Value Line while looking for hidden information on under valued stocks. I had become a follower of contrarian investor David Dreman's advice. The year was 1981. My grandfather and his second wife (my grandfather had been widowed) would send me their stock tips and newsletters too and it was a marvelous time! Can you believe it... a 23 year old man gave up chasing girls all the time in Hawaii for running long distances and following the stock market???!! (I didn't give up completely!)

When my boat would set sail for the Philippines or Hong Kong, I'd have the Asian version of the Wall Street Journal delivered to the hatch of the boat upon arrival. I was one strange machinist mate! (Destined to be a banker I suppose)

While we were in port in Pearl Harbor, I had the tremendous fortune of being assigned to a Japanese submarine , the Kuroshio, as a liassion of sorts, driving them where ever they needed (mainly to the weapons depot at West Loch to work on the old MK37 torpedoes the US Navy sold to Japan. We were using MK48s on Hawkbill. I made some friends while doing this duty, eating meals on the Japanese boat (that's why I don't eat squid or octopus any more-they eat it raw), drinking with them, playing softball. When the USS Hawkbill arrived in Yokosuka, Japan, some of the Japanese submariners (N. Kinoshita) met the boat and took me to their clubs, bars, and in to Tokyo with out any other Americans. I think I was able to see some things that not many others do; the opening of Disneyland Tokyo was one, but also a tour of the Japanese emporer's house and grounds, (see the picture above one of my favorites), and traveling to the top of a tower looking down on the city, and a Peace monument that was built before WWII. We went to a bar somewhere, I think near Tokyo, where I was again the only American around. It was a Kareoke bar! And before they had become popular in America. After drinking massive quantities (of scotch I think) I got up the courage to sing Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. Then after even more alcohol and persuasion, I saw a guitar hanging on the wall. It had six strings, the mama -san said I could play it, so after tuning it, I was on the stage again, singing something by John Denver and a Beatles song that I can't remember now either. Lots of fun. I think. If it weren't for the pictures I might not know!)

While I was on the Hawkbill, we sailed to many western Pacific ports. Among these was Yokosuka, Japan; Chinhae, Korea; Hong Kong; Subic Bay, Philippines; and Agana, Guam. Some of these ports we visited several times.

Probably one of the finest things about joining the military that is useful throughout life, is the ability to serve with men and women from all over the country and different situations from ones I grew up with. The advantage to being in the Navy over the other services is the travel and likely homeports. Instead of being stationed in Oklahoma you get stationed near an ocean (with beaches), and then you get to travel every year on a cruise to other countries.

There is more coming as soon as I have time to write it.

Paul

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