My six years of Navy life began in 1967. After a year of shore duty at Pearl Harbor, I volunteered for the Navy nuclear power program and submarine training. After a year of electronic schools in San Diego and San Francisco, six months of basic nuclear power school at Mare Island, there was a gap of several months before nuclear prototype school began in Idaho. During this time, I was temporarily assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Ranger which was in the yards at Hunters Point in San Francisco.

After a couple of weeks on the Ranger, two other electronic technicians and I were summoned to the meet with the officer in charge of our group on the Ranger and were notified that we had been ‘volunteered’ to go on temporary assignment to the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier which just pulled into Long Beach after a Vietnam deployment. In the month of June, 1969 we were flown to Long Beach and reported aboard the Hornet which soon departed for Pearl Harbor. We spent several days in Hawaii loading civilian reporters, television satellite and NASA equipment. After departing for some place in the south Pacific, one of the volunteers from the Ranger and I were summoned to the electronic officer’s quarters where we were told that we had been ‘volunteered’ to report to two civilians in a satellite communications hut on the Hornet flight deck. The civilians were engineers from the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center in San Diego. The engineers had built a satellite communication center used for the Apollo recoveries that provided communication between the recovery vessel, Hawaii and Houston. My shipmate and I were trained by the engineers to man the communication center at night while they slept. On July 24, 1969, Apollo 11 made splashdown. Since President Nixon was flown to the Hornet for the recovery, all non-flight related personnel had to remain below decks for the recovery but the civilian engineers requested that my shipmate and I be on the flight deck to assist them in the communication hut. We were one of the few on board the Hornet that were able to witness the recovery of the astronauts and space capsule from the vantage of the Hornet flight deck.

After completing nuclear prototype school in Idaho, I reported to a new construction submarine at Mare Island, the USS Hawkbill. After sea trials we reported to our home base in San Diego where we were one of the first submarines to perform initial testing with the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV) off of San Diego. I spent the remaining two years of my enlistment on the Hawkbill.

I don’t know of any other opportunities that a young man or woman could have to serve our country, gain a technical education, a chance to witness and be a part of history, have the responsibilities of running and maintaining complex equipment both on the sea and below the sea, all by the age of 24. This has always been a meaningful part of my life.