Back from San Diego

We actually got back on Tuesday. About 6 pm, not bad since we had left about 9:30 that morning... I just kept thinking about climbing in to my jetted tub. I was wearing a lidoderm patch, so the driving wasn't all that bad. It also does a lot for my ego, knowing I can still drive 400 miles in a day. The last long drive was in 2007, when we brought Cory and Angel out from Oklahoma City. Nice to see I can still drive.
"Props" out to my old Navy buddy George Haw, whom I got to spend a couple of hours with during my trip. George and I go back to 1981, pre-commissioning crew for the USS McKEE (AS-41). The ship has been de-commissioned, as the days of repair-at-sea are over. I guess the Navy finally realized how a tender, with surfaced submarines, presented a pretty big target for the sophisticated weapons of modern design. My firs ship, USS INDEPENDENCE (CV-62), is also de-commissioned. NTC San Diego has become a business/residential area. Most of my historic landmarks are gone! I'm sorry, I'm digressing...
George, you old sea-dog, it was great to see you, swap some memories, and to see you doing so well. You seem to be in a good spot, and who knows... Seeing you, and being somewhat overwhelmed by how far you took your career. I was content to be good at what I did, you went way beyond that.
I was reminded of an incident that happend during the Commissioning of McKEE, and decided to write about it on my blog...
Commissioning ceremonies are a lot more than a few speaches, bands, and the traditional "manning-the-ship". We were, after all, the newest, most updated Submarine Tender in the US fleet. The Secretary of the Navy, John Warner (in 1981), would tour the ship and see most of its key spaces. The Data Processing Center (S-8 Division) was determined to be one of those "key spaces". Each area on the itinerary would provide a "tour guide," who would "present" the spaces to our distinguished guest. Our LCPO (DPC Michanowicz) wanted nothing to do with the job, and it fell to me. Personally, I considered it an honor to be able to meet the Secretary of the Navy, and took it pretty seriously, until the XO (a CDR Watterman) started having "rehersals" every day. Watterman and I had a "history," in that I had carried his drunken-ass back aboard the ship one evening, and to him, DP's were NFG.
Watterman pressed these rehersals to the point that they became annoying. The final-straw was a "Dress Rehersal" in which we were supposed to wear our Service Dress Whites (with Medals). I was tired of these rehersals, and wore a Summer White uniform, with a well worn pair of Corafam's, my Service Dress uniform hanging in my office, along with a new pair of shoes. Watterman got after me, but I told him I wanted to make as little movement as possible in my Dress Whites. I planned on changing in my office. After a minute, he recognized the sense of my intent, we did the "Blah-Blah's," and he left.
On Commissioning Day, I changed in my office, made the few strides to my "position," and prepared myself for my required greeting. I don't remember, now, exactly how it went; I should, I said it enough times in the rehersals, but I told the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) my name, "Petty Officer Martin". Understand, this is 1981. Radio Shack had just unveiled the TRS-80, one of the first "home" computers, multi-function digital watches were not exactly new, and these all had more internal memory than the 16K of the AN/UYK-5 computer, the staple of the Supply Corps. SuDAPS was 20 years out-of-date when I first heard about them 10 years before. Ours was painted, and looked new, but it was a "refurbished" model, and wasn't working at the time.
SECNAV looked around and asked, "This looks like new equipment, Petty Officer Martin, is it new?"
"Sir," I replied, "you are standing in the finest example of a Data Processing Museum that the Navy owns."
Watterman almost passed out. SECNAV laughed and asked what I meant.
"Sir, do you carry a calculator?" I asked in return, and he did. "You have more memory in that calculator than this 6'x2' box."
"Go on..." SECNAV prompted.
I went on to show him the other parts of our system, 1/2-inch tape drives, a teletype for a primary interface, a printer that could probably survive a nuclear detonation, and a punched-card reader/puncher/interpreter. It was called a CRPI (pronounced "crip-eee"), we would joke that CRPI stood for Card Ripper Perpherator and Incinerator. It was guaranteed to jam, it was always a matter of how many cards had to be re-punched. SECNAV was attentive, and really listened, as I got my "two cents worth" in on the state of data processing at the time.
As the tour came to an end, SECNAV asked, "So how many people work here, Petty Officer Martin?"
I couldn't resist. "About half of 'em, but we get the job done." I replied with a smile.
SECNAV laughed for a few seconds, shook my hand, and said, "Well done, Petty Officer Martin. Very well done."
Watterman scowled at me, giving me on of his "This isn't over." looks. The rest of the tour group laughed, and congratulated me on my performance. It turned out that Secretary Warner was so impressed by my presentation that he signed a personal Letter of Commendation. Watterman made sure that there was no presentation, and I received the letter in the on-board mail. Then, CDR George Watterman, USN, did something heinous. After Commissioning, almost everyone received a Navy Achievement Medal, if they were a part of getting things fired-up and running. All kidding aside, this group of kids, my S-8 Division people, went far and above the call, begging for computer time, traveling to Bremerton from West Seattle, toting cards, tapes, and all that crap on the ferries, driving around the Puget Sound to Tacoma, and back up to Bremerton to avoid the tolls. This is a group that pounded out an end-of-the-fiscal year accounting, dragging it all from Seattle, to Mare Island, to the Naval Training Center San Diego, to get everything done (SuDAPS, IMMS, Payroll) in a timely-manner. Not one of them received as much as a "Thank you," or "Well Done." As the Leading Petty Officer, I took that very hard. I've always felt that it was Watterman's embarassment, to be passed-out drunk in the parking lot, and carried back by two "DP's" that fueled his detestation of ADP. To Odie, Daphne, Joe Wolfe, Tony Izzo, Louis Bollinger, Michael (Mico) Glover, Danilo Pascasio, Phil Rallos, Pat Story, and all of the rest of you who lived through it, I hope nothing ever came down to having a NAM, or not. It certainly had an impact upon my career. Had we been so recognized, as the rest of Supply Department had been, I may have gone further, but that's another story.
I've always been the type of person who takes "You can't do that." personally. The surest way to get something done is to tell me I "can't". We moved an 8-foot long, 2 1/2-foot wide, 40-inch tall sorter from the second, to the fourth deck, intact, when the ship's riggers told us it was impossible, but it got there, intact. We were told, going to the CADE (Computer Assisted Data Entry) system programming class that we couldn't connect the Maintenance requisitions with the appropriate Supply document required to place the orders, but we did. We learned to become Experts in a new generation of "remote terminal users," where Maintenance, Supply, Payroll, all had the ability to enter data into the system, which could independently trigger updates to their appropriate data bases. It was the begining of the end of Data Processing as a specialty, and the birth of interactive Information Systems, and Management.
Ah, but I drag on. But it's there, somewhere. We did it. We dragged cable to connect the first remote terminals to the DPS-6. Even in '81, data management was changing rapidly, the begining of the snowball of technological break-throughs in the past 30 years. "Gigabytes," no one knew that phrase. "GIGA?" OK, I met ADM Grace Hopper, got my set of wires from her very hand. "Nanoseconds," the distance an electron travels in one-billionth of a second. "GIGA?" Sorry, I'm into simple math.
Got to hold my grandaughter. I could make this really long, but I'll just say she's cuter than all of yours. I'm a happy grandpa. On Monday afternoon, I got to hold my grandaughter, and the young boy we pray will become a member of our family, Victor. the following day. What more can I ask, eh?