My father, my brother, and my husband all were veterans of
the US Navy.
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| Ensign Russell D Richardson |
My father volunteered in World War I, and was sent to Mare Island
Naval Station on San Francisco Bay, where the USS Gridley (a four-stack destroyer) was being built. As a “landsman,”
he was to be trained as an electrician, but the class was full so there was a
long wait until the next class. Half a dozen of these “landsmen” got bored with
nothing to do, so they hired tutors and studied to get their commissions as
officers – and did. (It was a relief not to have to sleep in a hammock
anymore!). My father was assigned to the Gridley
as an ensign; during the builder’s trial runs, it got pretty rough – green
water over the bow at 35 knots – but my father didn’t get seasick, and never
did (I wish I could say the same for myself, but I can’t.). The day the Gridley sailed out of San Francisco Bay
was the day the Armistice was signed.
One of the highlights of that first voyage was the passage
through the Panama Canal, recently built; another was that the Gridley was one of the ships stationed
at intervals across the Atlantic to report on the flight of the four Navy
seaplanes across the Atlantic, and if necessary, rescue any that didn’t make
it. The Gridley did have to rescue
the pilot of one plane; another destroyer tried to tow it, but the seaplane was
not built for that kind of treatment, and sank.
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| David C Richardson |
After the war, my parents married and had my brother, who
served in World War II. He was in college, Naval ROTC, and managed to graduate
(University of California). He was immediately sent to New York for midshipman
school at Columbia. The Navy then sent him off to the South Pacific. He had a
small sailboat on San Francisco Bay, and the Navy put him on a small ship, a
wooden APc originally designed for mine sweeping, etc. They had the not
unpleasant duty of exploring the remote islands & atolls to check up on the
presence of any Japanese (didn’t find any); but then were part of the
Philippine invasion. At Luzon, his little ship was attacked by a kamikaze, but
another US ship shot it down, so they were not damaged. From there, they faced
the imminence of invading Japan; but were “saved” from that by the atomic bomb,
and the subsequent Japanese surrender. People decry the use of atomic weapons,
but at least in this case, my family is grateful that the invasion did not take
place, and my brother was not killed.
After his tour of duty was done, my brother was assigned as
captain of an oceangoing tug launched in Portland, Oregon; he was to take it to
Honolulu. It had a small crew, only 2 officers – my brother and a navigator. The
poor navigator was seasick all the way to San Francisco, so my brother did the
navigation. As they approach the pilot boat at the entrance to San Francisco
Bay, the fog lifted – my brother said if he kept on going, it would’ve run right
into it. Since he’d sailed the San Francisco Bay and knew it well, he was
darned if he take on a pilot, and took the tug into the bay himself. After
delivering the tug at Pearl Harbor, he was released from the Navy. He continued
to sail in small (and larger) boats, even in the Midwest, whenever he could
find a lake to sail on.
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| Bert T. Walsh |
My husband was also in the Navy, during the Korean “conflict.”
He served on an LCd; once he showed me a photo of the hold – the “dock” –
loaded with wounded men on stretchers, being evacuated. Before that, growing up
in San Francisco, he had been a Sea Scout, and made lifelong friends – I still
have a photo of their sailboat, the “Corsair,” and its “pirate” flag is
brought out at every reunion. He attended the Maritime Academy at Vallejo, now
part of the University of California system. He sailed on oil tankers and also
for Matson, to Honolulu. I recall the time after we were married and had our
son, we were walking along San Francisco’s Embarcadero, and he told our little
boy how to get on a board a liner as a stowaway! But he had taken advantage of
the G.I. bill, went to college and eventually became a licensed mechanical
engineer. For a man who really didn’t enjoy traveling, his work took us to quite
a few places, in the US and Canada. After we “retired” to Northern California,
he even had a small sailboat on Whiskeytown Lake. Our son has missed our latest
embroilment (now too old). I’m hoping my grandsons – and their contemporaries –
never again have to face such situations.
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