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A legacy of having lived a relatively long life is that one can look back ... providing that one's memory is still basically intact ... on the host of characters with whom one has come into fairly close contact during all those years.
Included in that manifold roster of course are those one would just as soon forget, given the negative context of some of those past associations. Thus, I'm afraid I have to disagree with the statement by Will Rogers that "I never met a man that I didn't like."
I'm afraid that remark came from a pedestal too impossibly high for me, but I will concede that it's possible to single out admirable traits in those with whom one was somewhat less than friendly ... which may be what Rogers was actually getting at.
It was more than 50 years ago now that I had had fairly close contact, either just briefly or over a fair amount of time, with four persons I basically liked but who had such individualistic personalities that the memory of all four remains strong to me to this day.
That all four were such basically different personalities proved to me that one could never be sure of just "who" one might encounter in the Navy, or for that matter, in any branch of our armed services. The reason for this is that the population pot from which service personnel are drawn is immense, and the choice of what individuals are selected for certain posts is like a lottery, but which has at the same time some guiding principles that make it less than random.
I met all four of these individuals on Guam, where I was assigned in the late 1950s after officer training in Newport, R.I. The setting was the island's Naval Station, which was situated about three-quarters of the way down the west side of the 30-mile-long island at the base of the Orote Peninsula, which forms the southern shore of Apra Harbor.
The Naval Station was basically my little world on Guam. I worked there, and lived nearby in one of a number of Quonset huts that were divided into four large rooms that led off a large common room. Adjacent to the living quarters there was the station's dining facility, small officers' club, and even the station's outdoor movie theater.
Any housing and dining facility in a tropical climate such as Guam's wouldn't be complete without a place to swim, and we had one nearby. It was known as Gab Gab Beach, and it was located along the harbor's south shore. There was a large pool hewn from a reef and a social area for gatherings. (The name of the small place was probably linked to the indigenous people of the island ... the Chamorros ... and not to the type of conversation that might ensue there as a Navy recreation area.)
It was at a picnic at Gab Gab that I had a meaningful encounter with perhaps the most singular character of the quartet mentioned above.
His name was Jerry. The event was a picnic marking my arrival on the island and the departure of Jerry, who was the station's communication's officer. (I was replacing his assistant.)
As I recall, Jerry bought meat from a slaughtered sea turtle for the picnic, which proved quite tasty when grilled. (I have no idea where he got the meat.)
Jerry led a couple of us on a swimming excursion from Gab Gab out into the harbor to the edge of the reef, which abruptly fell off into the blue haze of the harbor's depths. This was a little risky, since we had ventured well beyond the stout steel mesh net that was strung along the outer end of the swimming area to protect it from the harbor's sharks
I recall Jerry telling how when he was stationed on a ship in San Diego he once had stayed up all one night armed with a submachine gun to guard the safe in his office which contained classified documents because the safe's combination lock had malfunctioned.
The contrast between Jerry and Lee, his replacement, could hardly have been more extreme. Lee had majored in theatrical set design at a Texas university. Although we shared an office, his duties were minimal, and he didn't spend too much time at his desk.
He was apparently very good at playing bridge, and his main occupation on Guam seemed to be playing that game at officer housing on Nimitz Hill, Guam's highest residential area, with the wives of senior officers. .....(Much later than my stay on Guam, the Nimitz Hill area was the site of an aviation disaster. A Korean Air 747 coming in for a landing on Guam crashed on Aug. 6, 1997, killing 229 of the 254 on board. Pilot error was blamed.)
For exercise (he wasn't a golfer) Lee would occasionally walk around Guam's Armed Services Golf Course with me and Jake Cummings, the next person I will mention in my Guam quartet.
Jake, a first-class radioman, supervised the enlisted personnel who manned the station's communications facility. He was very good at his Navy occupation, and had a good many Navy years behind him. (I'm your old "Sea Daddy," he would tell me.
Like Lee, he had a strong diversion on Guam ... in his case golf ... and I was fortunate in having him as an enthusiastic companion when touring the island's 18-hole golf course for service personnel, which was a very scenic layout.
But by temperament and in keeping with a likely Irish heritage, Jake tended to be somewhat erasable.
He had apparently fallen out with some Navy brass prior to being sent to Guam to serve out the remaining eight months of his enlistment. One of his favorite comments was "I'm getting out of this canoe club." But despite his apparent disenchantment with the Navy, he remained a strong proponent of encouraging enlisted men to rise in their respective ratings.
This led to friction between Jake and the fourth person I recall so well from Guam, whose name was Bob.
Stark was the petty officer in charge of the harbor entrance control tower and of a small group of sailors who manned the tower and lived in a small barracks located on the grounds of this facility, which was located at the far tip of Orote Peninsula and overlooked the main channel into the harbor and the tip of the Glass Break Wall to the north which protected Apra Harbor.
The tower's purpose was to keep track of vessels entering and leaving the harbor.
Jake accused Stark of not encouraging the tower's personnel to study and take the tests linked their ratings through which they could gain status in the Navy, augment their pay and thus further their careers in the service.
Jake may have been justified in his criticism, as Bob was a rather laid-back individual who lived with his wife in Navy housing located not far from the signal tower.
He had been in the Navy prior to having been posted to Guam, and had gone back to civilian life for a while before reenlisting. He had spent the interim period working for Ford in Detroit, and his dissatisfaction with his Ford office job led him to return to the Navy.
The change from the often-harsh weather in Detroit to the almost idyllic climate of Guam must have been as welcome to him as the move there from Erie had been for me. The change in the nature of his work at the two locations must have been equally noteworthy.
It was a short while later in my Navy service that I had a brief meeting with Stark.
He had been reassigned to a ship, the USS Cavalier, which plied the Pacific between Guam and Japan., and he told me of having gone through a typhoon while on the Cavalier.
"We took green water over the bridge," I recall him saying. (As a quartermaster, the ship's bridge would have been his duty station as sailors in that rating assist in navigation.)
I recall a message which had been sent to the captain of the Cavalier, berating him for having left Sasebo, Japan, "one of the safest harbors in the world" and sailing into the teeth of a strong typhoon.
Outside of the brief meeting with Stark, I didn't have any further contact with any of my four Guam characters after leaving the island.
They were absorbed back into the milieu of Navy and civilian life from which they had been chosen earlier to spend brief stints of their respective lives on a far distant tropical island the U.S. had acquired in a brief conflict with Spain at the end of the 19th century.
"Guam is good," was the rather droll oft-quoted comment I recall from my stay there.
Robert Stanger has lived seasonally for more than 40 years along the Allegheny River and has the stories to tell about it.