Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 04:15:38 -0400 From: harry Booker To: Joe Stevens Subject: Re: Kodiak armed forces radio/TV Joe: Here's the autobio excerpt I promised. Hope it answers some questions and proves to be of some use. Please let me know if you should happen to run into any of the guys from that period. I'd like to hear from them. Thanks, Harry Joe: As I said, here's an excerpt from an autobiography I recently finished for my grandkids (two girls and three boys, from 10 to 20 years old.) As I also said, my memory is fading in these matters. Some things are very clear and some are very dim. I'm surprised that some of the things which I would have thought were most important to me have drifted away, while many of the very clear memories weren't very important at the time. Odd. Anyway, you are free to use this material as you wish as long as you qualify it with the stipulation that it concerns recollection of matters that are now almost fifty years old and aging. I believe it's accurate but wouldn't swear to it in court. For instance the matter of the bunker we discussed. I'm sending you the photos I told you I have. One is a very washed out 35mm slide of the inside of the 'command room' or whatever. It shows a long table with chairs, a full wall map of the island and a few other details. Perhaps it was at Fort Greely. I seem to remember it was located somewhere near the Buskin River bridge next to the main runway. I remember we would drive up in our jeep, unlock a large steel door (single door - not double as in the photo on your website). There was a fairly short passageway straight ahead with another, longer, passageway going off to the right. There was electrical lighting in the bunker. There were several small rooms, right and left off this passageway. There were 'Civil Defense' water and rations stored in some of these rooms. At the end of the main passage there was another steel door which opened into the 'command room'. The memories of the stored Civil Defense material is very clear, so perhaps there is someone there who was with the Civil Defense operations at the time who could provide further information. Anyway, if you have any further question or information regarding Kodiak, keep in touch. I check my mail each day. The Armed Forces Radio and Television station at Kodiak Alaska, circa 1957 and 1958 I was looking forward to going to Alaska. Following my tour at China Lake NOTS (Naval Ordnance Test Station) in the middle of the Mojave Desert at the China Lake dry lake bed, I was ready for a change of scenery. Where ever I was transferred it had to be sea duty and Kodiak Alaska was considered 'sea duty'. I had heard from a couple of guys who had been stationed in Kodiak and both talked favorably about the scenery, fishing and even the weather. So I had put down "Alaska Sea Frontier" as my duty preference even though it could have meant a tour in Adak. There had been a few other choices, like a minesweeper berthed in Long Beach, Guam, and a couple of others which I have forgotten. No shipboard duty other than the minesweeper. But Alaska was my choice. When we returned from our honeymoon after visiting the folks on the farm, Evelyn and I drove to San Francisco where I checked into the Treasure Island Receiving Station once again. This time, however, I was allowed to stay with my wife instead of a barracks full of guys with smelly feet who snored. I just had to show up each morning for muster and to check for travel orders. Being a Petty Officer I was not required to provide any duty services like cleaning barracks or anything of that order. I wasn't even required to stand security watches. The muster was repeated again just after noon chow. You answered to roll call while standing on your assigned numbered squate painted on the grinder. Then, if your name wasn't on the transportation list you fell out and headed back to the beach. Evelyn and I stayed at the Drake Hotel, a very comfortable establishment downtown. The Navy picked up the bill and it gave us a little extension on our honeymoon. Within a week I had my travel orders and Evelyn had a job in S.F. and began looking for an apartment. I caught a Navy flight to Seattle. There I lay over for two days. It was cold and raining, pretty miserable weather. I had a liberty on the town but can't say I was overly impressed. Being cold, I made the mistake of putting my hands in my pea coat pockets, which through some warped reasoning were supposed to be ignored for either warming the hands or carrying objects. Fortunately for me a couple of alert SP's noticed my lapse of judgement and reminded me of my error. Then I caught an RD4 (Navel designation, I think, of a Douglas DC-4/6) and was off to Alaska. The flight, again if I remember correctly, was about three hours. We set down on the runway at Kodiak and taxied to a small building used by commercial aircraft. A lot of commercial air traffic came in and out of the Naval Station at Kodiak on a regular schedule with personnel and freight. Since the town had no airfield of its own, everything was at the base. There was a flight to and from Anchorage, three or four times weekly. All military personnel household goods were flown in and out by commercial cargo aircraft (a bunch of old DC-3s.) while personnel and families used Alaska Airways, or Northwest Airways, or something like that. I was hauled into the main base and entered the Personnel Office with my seabag and orders. When I presented my assignment papers, there seemed to be a problem. It seems that Kodiak Naval Station didn't have a billet for an ET Petty Officer. They had their full compliment. I was told I wasn't wanted and in the wrong place at a wrong time. But, I was assured that my orders would be sent back to Washington and I would be re-assigned by BuPers to another duty station. Sorry! Just then a Chief Petty Officer with a full load of hash marks on his sleeve (these indicated he had some thirty years in service, which meant he outranked every enlisted man in the building and was even given deference by lower ranking officers) spoke up. "Wait a minute, he's an ET and a Petty Officer." "Yeah, Chief, but we don't have a billet." "Sure we do. He can replace me on the 'hill'." "Welllll," said the Yeoman. "Look, all that's required is that he be a Petty Officer. It isn't like its an actual job. I took it because I had six months to kill. It's just managing half a dozen guys at the radio station. There isn't even a job description. He doesn't have to be a Chief. Now all I want is to get out of here and retire." Then the Personnel Officer, a Lt. Commander, happened by and got into the discussion. He asked if I had any experience with radio other than fixing them. I told him while in my first year at Arkansas Tech College I had worked as an announcer and control board operator at a small local radio station, KXRJ. The Chief said, "See he's already trained." The Commander and the Chief came to an understanding and in no time I was processed onto the base. My job? I was to become the station manager of the AFRS-TV station located on the 'hill', wherever that was. The Chief was headed stateside to be processed for retirement but they hadn't sent a replacement. Now he had one. The acronym, AFRS-TV, stands for Armed Forces Radio Service - Television. It provided daily radio and nightly radio/television service for both the Naval Station and the town of Kodiak and, if my memory serves, it consisted of a low power (250 watt) AM radio transmitter facility and a low-power (about 500 watt) television station. Now you should remember that in 1956 there was no color television, very little in the way of FM radio, no stereo recording, no cassette audio tape, and no tape recording of any kind for television. These things were in the development stages but not available for general use. The television was, of course, black and white. The station was located in an old two-story barracks building that sat on top a hill just a couple of hundred yards from the bay. (I note that on early maps of the base this bay is called "Woman Bay", but we always referred to it and the adjoining mountain as "Old Woman Bay". Perhaps we were a bit more poetic.") There were about a half-dozen men assigned to the station to serve as operating personnel, announcers, disc-jockeys, etc. Now there was no real rating or job classification for such work and the people assigned were a hodge-podge. I have since learned that we were unique in that out station was the first AFRS station anywhere. It had been started by the Army during the Second World War and slowly transitioned to the operation as I knew it. Once I delved into the background of the men assigned, I finally figured out that if you screwed up enough at whatever job you had, your Officer in Charge would ship you off to the Motor Pool. If you screwed up there, they would ship you to the 'hill' or Adak. So our crew were mostly 'screwups' and we were considered the "command of last resort". We even had one guy who looked like Donald O'Connor, was very talented, played the piano and had no fixed rating and wasn't 'striking' for any particular rating. Unfortunately for him, his uncle was a U.S. Senator and apparently o one wanted a Senator's nephew in their command - no letters going home to family in Washington. I knew nothing about radio or television broadcasting beyond twirling a few knobs on a control board and talking pretty at KXRJ which was very small and located on the campus of Arkansas Tech in Russellville, Arkansas. But then no one else did either, so it wasn't a noticeable handicap. Anyway, I was assigned a bunk in the general barracks and went to work. First, a few words about Kodiak, Alaska. Kodiak is a large island separated from the mainland by about twenty or thirty miles of water. It has a long history as a habitat for the Koniag and Aleutian Indians as well as any who happened upon it by boat. I was a sealing base and figured large in the Russian fur trade for a long time before Mr. Seward did a bit of sharp trading on behalf of Mr. Lincoln. There is one small town at the eastern end of the island. I would put the non-military population (not counting attached civilian workers) at about 300 to 500 souls, although that might be a little understated. Where it is located there is a natural bay and a number of other islands screening the town from the open ocean. The entire length of the town area is shielded by Near Island which is long and narrow, and there is a larger, Woody Island, just beyond serving as a second protection. There is very little flat land on the island which mostly consists of tall, very steep and rugged mountains covered with course grass, brush and a few trees - very few trees. It's difficult and beautiful. The weather in summer is quite temperate and in winter, about like Seattle with a bit more snow. Still, it wasn't -50o and six feet of the white stuff. In other words, it wasn't Fairbanks. The fishing is truly great and hunting is very popular. I was regaled with stories of John Wayne, etc. coming up for bear hunting. In fact, hunting was pretty much limited to the Kodiak bear, a very docile creature when left alone. (I learned about Kodiak bears from Kim Clark, a resident Fish and Wildlife biologist who became a good friend.) The town's existence, other than as a military base, primarily consisted of commercial fishing for halibut, salmon and king crab. The population was divided between fishermen, cannery workers and tradesmen. Add to this a large contingent of transient civil servants and Navy personnel and their families and you had a pretty hefty group. All in all, it made for a somewhat unpolished, but spirited, place to live. Prior to 1940, the island was just a rather quaint place to visit if you were a scientist or author or professional traveler. Then came the foreshadowing of war and Kodiak received a facelift. In came the Army, Coast Guard and Navy. Construction was heavy, from a military airfield to barracks to coastal Naval guns, and Army artillery. It was serious business, worrying the Japanese would invade at any time. Most of the installations at the time were Army, but the CG and Navy were also well represented. The Naval Base was divided (I don't think it exists any longer except as a Coast Guard Station) into a sea facility and an air base and in the mid-1950s was the headquarters of the Alaska Sea Frontier with, again if my memory serves me, a Rear Admiral Short in command. I think it was Rear Admiral Short. At least he was and that's what sticks in my aging mind. The base provided anchorage to a number of ships when needed, including a few submarines, and the air base, when I was there, had a contingent of VR2 squadron with P2V Neptune patrol aircraft which provided submarine patrols over the Bering Sea area. We were in the midst of the 'cold war' with Russia, and the Taiwan issue was creating unrest with China. The military wanted to keep tabs on Russian shipping and flights in the area along with submarine operations. The total number of personnel in 1857 was probably around two thousand military and another thousand civilians. The facilities at the base were limited and about half of the people lived with their families in the town. Now for AFRS-TV. I hiked up the hill and made my presence known. It was located in an old barracks building, very similar to the ones which graced the architecture of Great Lakes Training Center, "boot camp". The Chief was cleaning out his office but stopped to show me around and introduce me to the crew. On the lower floor was the Manager's office, two additional offices for whatever, an equipment room where various bits and pieces of radio equipment were stored, a record library (government issue, which had about four or five thousand 16" vinyl transcription records and a handful of the new LPs, and a telex room where news from AP, UP and AFRS was received by teletype in a 24 hour stream. In the library, there was just about every piece of classical and popular music you could name, all commercial recordings copied for government use. There were two small studios for broadcasting news, etc, and a control room. A waiting room, head (toilet), and a crew's bunk room finished the space. On the second floor was the television studio. It consisted of a large open area, about 30% of the space, which was intended as a live production studio. Opening onto that was a control room where the transmitter and console were located. Adjoining that was a 'multi-plex' room which housed the equipment needed to broadcast 16mm sound film. We did live newscasts and the odd interview broadcast, but nothing was really televised as live programing when I arrived. In the "multi-plex" room was a square pedestal about four feet in height. Surrounding it on the four sides, at distances of about two feet, were two 16mm sound projectors, a 35mm slide projector, and a statically mounted television camera. On the pedestal was a mirror system which could direct the output from any of the three projectors into the vidicon tube of the TV camera. Everything was remotely operated from the console in the control room. The AFRTS in the States would send us shipments every week by military aircraft. There would be a selection of movies and network programming from ABC, NBC, and CBS. These programs were recorded on 16mm black and white film which we would mount in the movie projectors and run during our evening broadcast time. So we had the same material being seen in the States, only a few days behind. The slide projector was used to project out station id pictures and other fixed announcements. Operating was just a matter of getting the next show mounted, killing the current projector, opening a mike and making a station-break and then switching to the next movie projector which held our program. We would have a reading of immediate news over the broadcast of a station logo on 35mm slide at six each evening. We couldn't run network news since there was no way to get the film to us on a timely basis. Our television equipment consisted of two DAGE b/w television cameras on tripods and a handful of lights, microphones and other odds and ends. The transmitter was also DAGE. We broadcast from 6pm to midnight, or a bit after if needed for the completion of a movie. Also on the second floor was a maintenance room, and a bunk room with a couple of racks for duty personnel. Our radio broadcast day would begin at 0600 hours with news and base announcements, followed by music and we then ran to midnight. The day consisted of music programming and news. We had a variety of music programs, classical, popular, country-western, and a little rock (very little), interspersed with news. Our news broadcasts were of two sorts. First there were live readings of news received via teletype, and there were also live shortwave newscasts from AFRTS studios located in Los Angeles. These were broadcast on rigid daily schedules, picked up by the Hammerlund and Halicrafter shortwave receivers in the control room and either patched directly into our transmitter. Or recorded onto Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorders and broadcast at our scheduled time. The crew were assigned the jobs of disc-jockey, control room operator and/or reading the news. Someone was always assigned to checking the teletype output and selecting the items for the next newscast. The 'disc jockey' on duty would go through the record library and select the music for his own show. For instance, I started a classical music show at noon each day. I think it was because I was the only one around who could pronounce most of the composers' names. A half hour or so before the show, I would select the music to play that day. My show was also preceded by a fifteen minute newscast which I would read. So I would also go through the teletype news and select about 15 minutes of news materia. Occasionally we would broadcast a live interview with the Admiral or whomever that the I&E office thought was important to be heard such as visiting VIPs. The I&E (Information and Education) office was just down the hill from us in a smaller building. The Ensign who was in charge of I&E at the time I was there, knew little about our radio or TV operations and we saw very little of him. In many ways that was very convenient. But it could also be a real problem at times. Television was another matter. We came on the air at 1800 hours with our station logo, projected from a 35mm slide, over which was a brief newscast read by one of the crew. This was followed by an evening of television programming from the states, as I said, shipped to us from AFRTS in Los Angeles. These were all of the current network programs although I can't remember exactly which ones. There was I Love Lucy, Groucho Marks, Amos 'n Andy, Gunsmoke, Dragnet, and others. These would come to us on reels of 16mm sound film. These programs would be no more than a week old and were flown in weekly. Our station personnel who were assigned to the television broadcast, would mount film on the two 16mm projectors for broadcasting. This meant each show had to be mounted and ready, then following a station break, the proper projector had to be switched in and aired. A full reel held thirty minutes of film so if a show was an hour long, you had to be ready to switch projectors at the right moment to avoid skips or delays. You had to pay attention. Well, I was dropped into it from the first day. Fortunately the crew were fairly happy with working on the 'hill' which was a very relaxed environment. So they were willing and able to help me out with scheduling and daily reports. The transition went pretty smoothly. I don't remember the retiring Chief's name. He had transferred here from a lengthy tour in Europe and regaled me with his slides of France and Germany. As for the station, I was led to believe that it wasn't one of his career highlights. I asked if they produced any live television and was looked at as though I was crazy. The Chief explained that the best policy was to keep a low profile. Do what was required and forget about innovating anything new. It was explained that no one paid any real attention to 'the hill' and everything stayed quiet. However, I met with the I&E Officer and submitted some of these ideas. He sent them on to the Admiral's office for comment. The Admiral seemed pleased with the ideas and said we should go ahead. The first real screw up came about a week after the Chief departed. Seems one of the guys who was running the control board in the TV studio, fell asleep at the wheel. The Sixty-four Thousand Dollar Question was humming along and he just doped off. When the bitter end of the film ran out the bottom of the projector with a 'flap', 'flap', 'flap' sound, television screens all over the island went blank. It was only for about a minute that we were broadcasting dead air but it seemed like an hour. Then screens lit up with the slide logo and the one which said "One minute Please". One of the other guys ran in to awaken Rip Van Winkle out of his dream. He made the station break while the other guy mounted up the next program. We managed to slip that one by as everyone assumed it was just one of our not-too-infrequent transmission problems. Admiral Short liked television. He always watched on his 21" set for which the ET shop provided service. I got a call from one of his Lieutenants the next morning asking what had happened and what was needed to prevent such interruption in the future. Several direct and clear suggestions were offered. That afternoon I announced to the crew that from then on there would be two people assigned to the television duty crew instead of just one. It would be each man's priority to keep the other awake! They didn't really like it because it cut into their off duty time, but we had also received two new bodies and the duty would be shared a bit more easily once they were trained. At any event they knew they had screwed up and had to pay the consequences. Meanwhile, I was busy trying to get the dependent paper work and things done so that Evelyn, my bride could move up to join me. I had to arrange for transportation for her and take care of allotment papers, accommodations, etc. They assured me it would only take about six weeks. I began searching for living quarters. There were married quarters on base but these were restricted to essential base personnel, and I guess they didn't think television and country-western music weren't all that essential. So I'd have to find accommodations in town. There was a civilian housing project which came from the Second World War era but for some reason I can't remember I wasn't able to locate there. It may have been there were no vacancies. But I finally located an apartment out on Mission Road for rent at a price I was willing to pay. The house was built on a steep hillside overlooking the Kodiak Channel, just above the Kodiak Electric Company power plant. I didn't rent the house, but the wedge shaped space beneath the house which had been made into a small efficiency apartment. It was owned by a man named Ben Gurhke who became a very close and dear friend. It was cozy but nice, had a good oil furnace and a bay window that provided a wonderful view of the channel and Near Island. I had been making waves at AFRTS. As I said, I had taken the 1200 to 1400 radio slot (that's noon to 2pm) to do a classical music show. Up to that time, no one played classical music. It was all pop and a little CW. The show went over very well and we got some very positive responses even from the Admiral's wife, other ladies of the base and even from a few men. That was fun. On the TV side, the fact that no one knew anything about doing live television didn't stop us. We didn't know how to effectively use the cameras, how to script the show, how to light it, or even how to go about directing the participants, but figured no one else knew either and we would just try to emulate the stuff that we saw on the network shows. With a suggestion from one of the ETs at Base Electronics, Miles Mederis, our first effort was to be a quiz show. Miles had a real desire to be a TV celebrity. We would round up four contestants, one from each of the military services (Navy, Coast Guard and Marine) and one civilian. They would be asked questions from several categories and the one with the highest score would receive a $25.00 U.S. Savings Bond as a prize and get to return for the next show as the champion. I wrote out a script for the show and we made up questions in four catagories - American History, Geography, Current Events, and Military Knowledge. We used two cameras on dollies. The set consisted of a library table with five chairs and a couple of microphones. There was no backdrop, just simple lighting from the six or so stage lights we had. Then we located some volunteers to be our contestants, which wasn't easy. We played with the cameras trying to let the guys assigned as cameramen learn a little of what they were doing, and rehearsed the announcer and show format until we figured we were as ready as we were going to get. Our camera men, lighting men, and the announcer were all members of the station crew and were all virgins at this. Since it was done live, at night, everyone grumbled that the time should count as watch duty and they should be relieved from working the radio side of things which meant some of us had to double up on the radio. And, since it was live, it had to go right the first time or else our screwups would be broadcast to the whole island (at least to those watching). Finally, the first show was ready. It had been announced well ahead of time and Admiral Short (come to think of it, maybe his name was Small) was very enthusiastic in his support. He was going to be in the studio to say a few words and watch the broadcast. So there we were. I cued the control room and they faded us into a slide we had made for the show's logo. Over this I announced the show with a Sousa march as background music. We were going to use Anchors Aweigh but one of the Marine contingent objected, wanting the Marine's Hymn instead. So we used Sousa. Then we switched to the studio where Miles welcomed everyone to the show and introduced the Admiral who said something about being proud to premier this 'ground breaking' show, or something effusive like that. We were, we were told, producing the very first live quiz show in the history of AFRTS television. Miles then took over, explained the game and introduced the four contestants who sat nervously in their seats around the table, each saying a few words about where they were from and that sort of thing. About half an hour later, the winner (the Coast Guardsman) had received his bond and I signaled 'cut'. That was it. Everyone got to shake hands with the Admiral and we all felt great, adrenaline pumping. But we soon found out we had a problem! I don't really know why, maybe it was the cameras, maybe it was just that TV was still new, but we couldn't get any volunteers for contestants for the next show. As a group, all the military people said 'no'. They liked the show but they didn't want to be on camera. We finally badgered three contestants to add to the CG guy who had won the first time around. But it was even harder on the third show. We were short a Navy rep and finally I was pushed into doing the gig. Now, it was decided that since there was a conflict of interest, my being with the studio and all, I couldn't win. It just wouldn't look right. Right? Someone else announced the opening of the show that night and I skulked in a chair at the table. Unfortunately, and I say this without trying to be mean, the other three contestants were a bit on the ignorant side, including the winner from the previous week. It came down to a final question. I had been answering wrong to most of my questions, trying to stay at the bottom of the pack without looking too dense but it was becoming difficult. My final question was "On what continent are the Andes Mountains located?" Well, here I really was dense. I quickly confused the Andes Mountains and the Himalayas and before I caught myself, I answered "South America" thinking I was giving the wrong answer. Wrong! I had won! But the question had been too easy. We should have made certain my questions were impossible to answer correctly. I received my bond and, of course, was announced to come back the following week. I didn't show and we made an excuse and forced another of the station guys in my place. I think I threatened him with night duty for six months. We did, however, receive a letter of commendation from the main offices of AFRTS recognizing and applauding our effort. As station manager I was, of course, responsible for its operation. After all, a captain is responsible for his ship. I would come home in the evening and immediately turn on our good old Muntz TV in its blonde cabinet so I could monitor the station. I had done this one evening and we had just started dinner with the sound of the TV in the background. Suddenly I froze. From the TV were coming voices, not of the performers on the Lucille Ball show, but of two men, and what they were saying was beyond Ricki at his worst! "Where the *(^(^%T*^&%& have you been? I had to pull your (*&@$)) watch!" "Oh, &^$#)@#, I overslept this afternoon. But what the (#$&$#_ , I pulled duty for you last week, you &^)#&^)(_)_(#*! So quit your )(*&)()&^)!" And so it went, a running line of verbal sewage coming from my speakers. I grabbed for the phone, but before I could reach it, it rang. "Hello?" "Booker?" "Yes." "This is Commander Smith (or whoever, it was the rank that counted) calling for Admiral Short! What the hell is going on? Are you listening to the television?" "Yes sir! I was just calling the station, sir." "Well get your ass up there and straighten this thing out! And the Admiral wants you and those two clowns in his office at 0800 hours tomorrow morning! Is that clear?" "Yes sir!" That was the end of that. The voices had also stopped so someone must have told the guys what was going on. Ken Rashke, one of the more stable of the station crew answered my call. He told me he had stopped the problem. It seems the man on duty was steamed because his relief hadn't shown on time, he was almost thirty minutes late. The angry operator opened his mike and made the station break as required between shows by FCC regulations. Just at that moment he was interrupted by the guy coming in to relieve him and he forgot to kill the mike. Hence the unauthorized broadcast of normal sailor language. I told Rashke to pass on the Admiral's compliments and that they were to meet me outside the Admiral's office a 0800. The Admiral's office was located in the largest (with the exception of the aircraft hangers) building on the base with a sign that read, "Headquarters For The Alaskan Sea Frontier - U.S. 12th Naval District". We grouped outside in the Admiral's door next to his Yoeman's desk and awaited his pleasure. Finally, I was summoned in alone. I entered, came to attention and announced my presence ". . . reporting as ordered, sir!" The admiral looked at me as though he were seeing a rat that had just been caught in the mess of his ship. Then he began to lecture me on the damage to all of the social graces, the delicacy of ladie's senses, the minds of young children, the tranquility of his wife's dog, and the decorum of the Naval establishment in general, here and abroad, which the language used by my personnel had caused. I apologized and assured him that strict measures had already been taken to ensure the situation never happened again. (I, of course, was trying disparately trying to think of what measures I had taken.) Once he was satiated in chewing on me, he dismissed me to stand to one side and had the two culprits brought into his presence. I listened while he chewed on them for several minutes, with much sharper teeth than I had experienced, then he busted both of them one grade. He didn't remove them from the station crew, (where else could he have sent them?) but turning to me he said he didn't want serving as announcers or in any other capacity they might screw up later on. He said they could serve only in maintenance and janitorial duties. We thanked him and were dismissed. One of the guys was royally pissed off at the Admiral, but the other was thankful they hadn't received a trip to the brig or reassignment to Adak. I remained at AFRTS until August of 1958. Then, when I only had about four months left on my enlistment, I learned I was being transferred down the hill to the Base Electronics Shop which was right on the bank of Women's Bay. It seems Warrant Officer Burkholder, in charge of Base Electronics, had finally learned I was an Electronics Technician. He couldn't imagine how an ET could be forced to associate with 'that bunch pansies on the hill'. He had kept petitioning the Personnel Officer, arguing there was a billet open for an ET Petty Officer he was successful in getting them to reassign me. I'm not sure who took over the station, perhaps it was Ken Rashke who was also a PO. I wish it had turned out differently. I, with the help of some others, a number of members of the Kodiak Little Theater, had started planning how to put on a live television broadcast of a couple of musicals and even a production of their theater company. That would have been fun. Now CWO Burkholder actually did believe he was doing me a favor even though I tried to ensure him that I was perfectly happy and had been for many months. But what was done was done. So I packed my things and moved to the ET shack. Instead of classical music and television shows and working with a bunch of fun screwups, I spent my time doing mundane, routine, work stuffing mobile radios in trucks, supervising night and weekend duty crews, putting up with a Chief Petty Officer who was more interested in not getting a wrinkle in the crease of his pants while sitting at his desk all day. On the hill I was involved in creativity even at a low level. In the shop I was dealing with checking the filaments on electron tubes and ordering more long-nosed pliers for the short-timers to cumshaw. For me it was a considerable come-down. But I only had a few months left so it wasn't too bad. I hated to leave Kodiak for many reasons. My first son, Steven, was born at the base hospital. We had developed many close friends in town and I enjoyed the fishing, skating, beautiful scenery and other benefits of living in such a place. We had traveled into the mainland of Alaska and would have gone back every year had we stayed. But we now had a baby to raise and I had a date with university which was the reason I had joined the Navy in the first place. So when the time came, we packed our bags, the Navy packed our household effects (including a small pail of garbage), and we caught a flight back to San Francisco. As for the rest, I went on to earn my Masters in Education, worked as a teachers at a couple of small colleges, also worked for the feds in drug enforcement, then dropped out, became an actor and director, and finally an artist married to an absolutely fabulous lady and living in Canada. If you'd like to see what I look like and some of my art, visit my website at: http://www.execulink.com/~jcole/art.htm It's a bit sad to know there's nothing left of the Naval Base but a Coast Guard contingent, but the memories are, though fading, overwhelmingly great. I keep suggesting to my son he take a vacation and visit Kodiak but he's busy piling up the money and raising three kids of his own. Maybe someday he'll go back. I wish I were in a position to do so.