On September 1961 after graduation from high school I enlisted in the US Navy. The Navy wasn't my first choice. I really wanted to join the Air Force with some of my other buddies. Unfortunately the Air Force recruiter had already met his quota so the only openings was the US Navy.
After basic training I was destined to become a photographer. lt was the goal I set when I was still in high school. There were no training openings at the time,so they sent me to a small navy air base in Florida . There I would have to wait until they could find a base to train me. I was only there a few months when a unfortunate accident with a jet engine changed the course of what I set out to be. That small Naval Air Base was Cecil Field.
The next thing I knew is that I was transferred to Jacksonville Naval Station Hospital. This lasted almost four weeks and I remained in the hospital to recover from a major operation on my right hand. The doctors there had to remove the first joint of my middle finger.
When I fully recovered I got orders that I was being sent to the Far East. To my suprise this was the US Naval Air Station Sangley Point in the Philippines.
It took almost a week before I finally arrived at Sangley Pt. I had to go through training and get inoculated for the trip to Asia. When I arrived at Sangley, I asked the chief petty officer in charge of operations if I could be attached to the photo lab on the base. Much to my surprise, there was an opening for a photographer in training . I accepted the position and began my training as a Navy Photographer. I spent a year and a half at Sangley Point. There I would learn all aspects of naval photography from loading and developing film in the darkroom to hanging out the window of many aircraft and taking aerial and reconnaissance photos of the islands.
During my tour of duty at Sangley, right around the time of President Kennedy's assassination, my grandfather passed away. My family was devastated by his passing . They summoned me to come home for his funeral. Since I was raised by my grandparents, I was allowed to take a leave of absence. During my tour at the Air Base I got to fly in many of the aircraft that were stationed there at the base.Some of my flights were with the VP-40 Seaplane Squadron on Recon missions.After my tour at Sangley Pt I was transferred to the Aircraft Carrier USS Yorktown CVS10
On the USS Yorktown things were a lot different than on a ground Naval Base. There we had to photograph every landing and takeoff . We had a giant television camera in a location on the ship that was the crows nest. We also took still pictures of planes being catapulted off the deck. In the photo lab on the ship we mixed photo chemicals in giant vats . Thousands of photos were processed and printed every few days.
The experience of doing all this on a floating city was awesome. I was discharged from the dock at Long Beach ,CA on September 13, 1965. To this day I still remember the experiences that I had in the US Navy. I am great full for my past and also thank my son for thinking of his Dad in this way and helping me build this website.