Taps

We buried my father last Thursday in a Veteran's Cemetary in Delaware.

It's the hardest thing I've experienced while sober. My mother died while I was still drinking and I was pretty drunk through the whole thing.

This was different.

There was a brief service at the funeral home from 9:00 until 10:00 a.m. Dad's cremated remains were in a box on a table to the right and, on the left, was a table full of memorabilia about my dad -- much of it from his Navy days during WWII in the South Pacific where he was a gun captain aboard a refueling ship -- the kind of ship the Kamikaze's loved to aim for because they made such nice booms. Dad would only say of his wartime experience that he and his crew had "shot down a couple of Japs."

I was detached and calm through that whole part of the morning. At 10:00 we struck out for the cemetary and were there in about 20 minutes.

As we disembarked in front of the reception building a single bell started to toll. A Navy man, in dress whites, stood in front of the building holding a wooden case containing the folded up Old Glory. As we entered the building, across the quarterdeck, an honor guard, all in dress uniforms, stood on both sides and rendered us a salute.

We turned the corner into the chapel, the back wall of which was solid glass, two stories high. Outside we could see the rifle squad marching out to a mound, followed by the bugler.

My siblings and I, with my step-mother between my brother and sister, sat in the front pew... the rest of the family and friends filling in behind.

The minister made some remarks about dad being called "by the Supreme Commander in the sky" and I just dissolved. It started with a noise I had never heard myself make before -- followed by a flood of mucous and tears and sobbing and more weird noises. I reached around under the pew, looking for a box of tissues, but they only had this wimpy little kimwipe type things that wouldn't hold an ounce of water. I looked down the pew and my sister and brother had also both lost it. We were all bawling our eyes out.

Then came the kick in the gut. After the rifle squad had fired their salute and the bugler had played taps and the flag had been re-folded into the familiar triangular shape, the Navy Captain ( an O-6 ), took the flag as shown above and knelt on one knee in front of my stepmom.

"On behalf of the President of the United States, the Secretary of the Navy ... and a grateful nation..."

WHAM! It hit me. I was feeling feelings I didn't know I could feel. I knew that I loved my dad and had always loved my dad even when I resented him and that I would miss him.

And deep down inside I knew that I had made a good decision 42 years ago, when I decided to enlist in the Navy.

As had my father. As had his father.

I am my father's son.

And at heart, we are all deep-water sailors.

Memorial Day

I called my dad on Sunday to see how he's doing (not well) and to thank him for his national service during World War II. He was grateful on both counts.

My dad never talks about it, but he was a tail gunner aboard an aviation fuel refueling ship in the South Pacific during the war. It was the kind of ship that Kamikaze's loved to dive-bomb. Dad got a lot of practice shooting Kamikaze's out of the sky.

His dad, my grandfather, was in the Navy in the 1920's. Pop-pop was stationed aboard a battlewagon, the USS Delaware. He was a Boilerman. But his real job was to be the coxswain for the Navy's championship rowing team. He led the Navy team to something like 4 victories. The Navy was heartbroken when Pop-pop bailed out at the end of his second enlistment in 1927.

I was born under a water sign, Cancer. I came from generations of Navy men. It was inevitable, I guess, that I would go to sea.

I never stroked a championship team, nor did I blast Jap Zeros out of the puffy-clouded South Pacific sky. But I did serve my country, honorably, from 1968 to 1972. I was an aviation electronics technician. I spent most of my enlistment ashore, in boot camp, electronics schools and, for a two year stretch, attached to the Flight Test Division of the Naval Air Test Center located in Lexington Park, Maryland.

I love working there. The best and the brightest of both officers and enlisted members of the services were sent to the NATC. Our test pilots all had "the right stuff." Our enlisted personnel were either on their way to becoming officers or else they had turned down commissions due to their feelings about the Viet Nam war.

Eventually, though, the time came for sea duty, and I was sent to Lakehurst, New Jersey, were I was assigned to HC-2, The Fleet Angels, a Sea-Air Rescue Helicopter Squadron. After six months of non-descript duty aboard the base I was re-assigned to a detachment leaving for six months of sea duty aboard the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, CVA-42.

Rosie was a WWII relic. Rather like dad. She wasn't as fast as the newer nukes. She was smaller than most of the newer carriers. But she was feisty. And she was comfy. She had a "lived-in" look and feel that you couldn't find aboard newer ships. If you look real close at the arresting gear, my bunk was under the the #3 arresting wire. You have no idea how loud a 40,000 pound jet aircraft slamming into the deck at 150 miles per hour is, when it's just six inches above your face.

Rosie had character. I like ships with character.

I don't expect anyone to ever thank me for my duty. It was a great time in my life. I met some great guys, got drunk a lot, and learned how to play well with others.

And do you know that, to this day, I still fold my socks and underwear exactly the way I was taught to do it in bootcamp?

Catholic school was good training for the Navy. But the Navy had much cuter guys.

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UPDATE: California Supreme Court Upholds Proposition 8. Existing same-sex marriages to stand.

Tell me again why I should be grateful to this country for all it does for me?

Veteran's Day - 2007

I am a vet. A wartime era vet (VietNam). I did not see combat, but I took my chances along with everybody else. I didn't run off to Canada, although I could've, and with the blessings of E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. where I was employed at the time I was drafted. They offered me a transfer to DuPont of Canada, if I'd chosen to do so. I declined.

I didn't get some rich relative (of which I have none) to "buy me" a place in the National Guard or the reserves.

I didn't run. I got drafted. I enlisted in the Navy instead. I was on active duty from 1968 to 1972. I climbed the corporate ranks of the military, too. I went from E-nothing to E-5 in 2 years and change (that's the equivalent of a Sergeant in the other services). My quarterly ratings were always in the top 5 percentile. I was Sailor of the Month and Sailor of the Quarter in my divisions at the Naval Air Test Center and I graduated first in my class in Aviation Electronics School. When my enlistment was nearing it's end an unending string of Chief Petty Officers and Officer/Pilots walked the deck with me, trying to convince me to re-enlist.

In short, I was a model sailor and a valuable military asset.

There was only one, teensy thing wrong with me as far as the government was concerned. I was a homosexual. They didn't know that, of course. But I did. I endured 4 years of listening to derogatory comments about queers and living in fear of "being found out" at any time. But I kept my secret because I had goals ... to fulfill my obligation to the nation and to collect my hard-earned VA benefits once my enlistment was up.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed, finally, a bill outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. They dropped the trannies in order to "git'er done." I hate politics, even as I understand the necessity for it. Both sides must come away feeling as though they have something to show for it.

So the poor trannies got thrown under the bus. As someone who has been thrown under the bus any number of times, I totally understand how they must feel today.

At any rate, the bill is progress. We live in an imperfect nation with imperfect leaders who govern imperfectly.

So this Veteran's Day (Sunday) I intend to keep in mind two heavily put-upon underclasses in this nation of ours. The closeted men and women who proudly wear the uniforms of our armed forces and our transexual citizens whose only crime was to feel compelled to heed Shakespeare's admonition to "thine own self be true."

I am truer to myself today than I have ever been in my entire life. And yet, there is much work remaining to be done. And that goes for the country, too.

Peace, everyone.

The Prisoner of Zenda

Day Two of being "on call" for jury duty and I've yet to be summoned to the Imperial Court in beautiful downtown Trenton (pronounced "Treton" by the locals).

Which, perversely, has worked WONDERS on my efforts to whiz through Season Two of "Lost." I polished off five episodes today. It was either that or "The View" and "Oprah." And I'd rather slit my wrists than watch either of those.

When I called the check-in number last Friday I was released for yesterday. So I went to work. Then, yesterday when I called the check-in number again, the recording said that I was free for this morning but had to be on-call for the afternoon session and that I should call again "after 11:30" to see I would be needed. Sooooo, I called at 11:30 and was released for today. By then it was too late to go to work and too hot to do anything of interest on a weekday, so I watched "Lost."

I called again after five and was informed that they would like to see me (and potential jurors numbered 0700 through 1500) at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow. So, first thing in the morning I'm off to the Emerald City, or whatever they call it, to do my civic duty by sitting around in a stuffy jury pool room with a couple of hundred other "invited guests" of the state, for mind-numbing hour after mind-numbing hour of sheer boredom, punctuated by moments of start raving insanity.

By five p.m. tomorrow I'm sure we'll ALL be candidates for anger management classes. I already am, and I haven't even been there yet!

Sigh.

I thought I was through with all this civic duty crap when I finished up my four year enlistment in the Navy a hundred bajillion years ago.

Still, there is one thing I know... if I ever found myself on "that side" of the law again, I would desperately hope and pray that I could get a jury composed of people just like me.

Because I am eminently qualified to determine which side has the best lawyers.