August 1968

The old man sat in his chair watching the evening news. For the last several days, there was a minor story on a large hurricane, named Doria, traveling up the middle of the Atlantic. Since it was not predicted to make landfall, the news channels were not making their typical dire warnings of “the apocalypse is upon us“.

Tonight, however, appeared to be different.

They were reporting that a smaller cruise line had offered the services of one of its older ships for a humanitarian effort to bring several hundred children out of a war-torn African nation. The “perfect storm” was occurring just offshore of the Carolina sand islands; the ship’s engine had failed, the until then meaningless hurricane had engulfed the vessel and there was nothing the Coast Guard could do to help. The few helicopters they could task to the effort would not be enough for a rescue effort and over the years since the War, Congress had allowed their fleet to diminish and grow old. A reporter was yammering on and on about how the plight of the children was worsening and that they were facing certain doom.

The late teen male sitting on the couch beside the old man’s chair was reaching for the TV tuner dial when the old man said, “William, leave it. I wish to see what the next reporter has to say.”

With a surly smirk, the young man yelled, “MOM! Gramps is hogging the TV! They are showing ‘Rowan & Martin’ from last week.”

A disembodied female voice came out of the kitchen, “Dad, why don’t you take a nap. I’ll have dinner ready in about two hours. The rest will do you good. That way, Billy can watch his show.”

“I don’t need a nap. I WANT to see what is happening with this cruise ship!” the old man yelled in return.

During this short back and forth, Billy had reached out to dial and was turning it to WYFF, the NBC affiliate in Greenville, SC.

“Boy, put the channel back or lose the fucking hand,” the old man said.

“MOM! Gramps is cursing again,” Billy yelled.

“DAD! You know I don’t allow that kind of language,” said the woman, bustling out of the kitchen.

By this time, the old man had risen to his feet and fixed a gimlet stare at the young man. “Boy, when I was your age, I had respect for my elders.”

“Was that before or after they discovered dirt, old man?” Billy scoffed.

The man’s hands had begun to clench into fists and his vision was narrowing when the female entered the living room, saw the situation and began to move the old man along. “Dad,” she said, “why do you have to keep picking at Billy? You know he’s sensitive.”

“Sensitive, my ass,” said the man as he was harassed out of the living room and down the hall by his daughter-in-law, “He is a self-centered slug.”

“DAD! Billy has issues with authority figures and it’s not his fault that the police have it out for him.”

They were just entering the old man’s bedroom. His daughter-in-law was shepherding him along as if he was an imbecile. “The police do NOT have it out for ‘poor Billy’. If the boy would get a job instead of hanging out with that crowd of petty criminals and losers all the time they wouldn’t be after him,” he said, “And the way you coddle him does him no good service either.”

“Dad,” she said, “How many times do I need to remind you that you are a guest in our house? I will not let you get away with badmouthing my son!” With that parting shot, she closed the door and left the old man to his thoughts.

On her way back to the kitchen, she detoured long enough to ruffle Billy’s hair, give him a hug and say, “You’re a good boy, Billy. Don’t let that useless old man get you down.”

With the ‘old man’ issue resolved, they both went on about their daily routines.

The old man turned away from the closed door. His blood pressure was way up and the bile in his stomach was roiling. He turned on the small TV on top of his dresser just in time to hear the end of an interview with the PAO from Charleston Navy Base. “While the Navy is deeply concerned over what is happening just off our coast, we are in the same boat, sorry for the pun, as the Coast Guard; we simply do not have the active resources available to stand up a rescue mission.”

“There you have it, Tom,” the reporter said, “Standing here in North Charleston, in this mild rain storm, it is hard to imagine that there is a life or death drama playing out a short distance off our coast. What would be a short drive on land, is an eternity away for those poor children and the adults working to save them from the jaws of war. Back to you, Tom.”

The old man opened his closet and yanked a battered footlocker out from under the neatly hanging row of clothes. There IS an asset that can do this, he thought as he opened the footlocker and began to dig through its contents. First, he tossed a well-worn O-2 coat off to the side, followed shortly by a set of equally worn khakis, their metallic gold emblems winking at him from the collars. As he was dressing, he was working out in his head how to dig up his old crew.

“Robert!” she said as her husband finally got home, “You need to do something about your Father. He went off on Billy again for no reason. I know we talked and I agreed to have him stay with us but he is getting impossible. I think we need to talk about sending him to the home.”

The old man sat in the OOD Bridge Chair looking out into the gloom of the night. A rating came up beside him, offering a steaming mug of coffee. “Sorry, Sir,” he said, “the Chief is down below cursing out the storekeepers who let the galley supplies go down. He was able to find coffee so he has lots of joe to go around. He’s trying to scrape up enough cans to get something hot put together.”

“That’s okay, Krepki,” the old man replied as he reached for the handle-less mug, “it’s surprising he was able to find even this.”

The rating nodded his head and went back down the center passageway. The old man went back to staring out the windscreen.

Sipping his coffee and staring out into the blackness, the old man’s mind wandered back in time.

Midshipman Warren Kelly threw his cover into the air along with the rest of the Class of ‘22. He had just suffered through the grueling torture of “Graduation” and was now officially ENSIGN KELLY USN! It had taken a boatload of work to get his grades up when he first arrived four years earlier.

When his father was killed in the Great War, his now single mother had to work two, and sometimes three, jobs to keep a roof over their heads. As soon as he was able, he started picking up part-time and after school jobs to help out. As a consequence, his grades in high school had slipped; not bad enough to get him kicked out but not much better.

As graduation approached, he tried to get an appointment to West Point. Between his grades and lack of “public service and sporting” entries on his application he did not make it. He was discouraged and had started to look for a job at the local mill when out of the blue a guy knocked on his mom’s door one summer evening. He was wearing a khaki uniform, but Warren could tell it was NOT US Army.

After apologizing to his Mom for arriving unannounced, the man introduced himself as David Alexander, a friend of his Father from back in the war. He explained that after the war, the Army was cut way back and the only way he found to stay in service was to join the Navy.

The visit was nice; David told some silly stories that were appropriate for wives and children about the things he and Warren’s Father had gotten into. As things were winding down, David asked what Warren’s plans were for the future. Warren explained his failure to get an appointment to West Point and his subsequent plan to just get a job.

Alexander looked perplexed and then asked why Warren was not trying for Annapolis? A bit stunned, Warren had no answer. David explained that he had some favors owed him and as the surviving son of a killed in action service member Warren had a better than average chance of getting into “Canoe U”.

That fall, Warren had traveled by train to Annapolis, Maryland to begin his future ... and now that future was upon him.

“SIR!” the Quartermaster startled him out of his ruminations, “we’ve cleared the twenty mile line, our current speed is fourteen knots and we are heading towards last known position. We are encountering a Sea State 3 condition at present.”

“Very well,” Kelly replied, “I want best possible speed, but I’d rather make it a few minutes late than not at all, so watch your heading and sea state.”

Mary VanderFloote’s family was as aristocratic as you could be in the United States. The family dated back to the Dutch “New Amsterdam” days of what was now Schenectady, New York. They originally were landed and wealthy from running the North America end of the extremely lucrative trade between the New Word and the Old.

Over the years the wealth had been utilized to diversify into industries and investment almost beyond the ability of the army of retained accountants to catalog. Young Mary went to the best private elementary and high schools in New York. After graduation she went to Bryn Mawr College outside Philadelphia. In the fall of her Junior year she relented to the unending pleas of her roommate to join her in going to a dance sponsored by the local YWCA. It was only once they arrived that Mary realized the dance was cosponsored by the USO and many of the young men in attendance were resplendent in their crisp military uniforms.

LT (JG) Warren Kelly was feeling extremely uncomfortable. He had agreed to accompany another J.O. from his ship to a stupid USO dance and was now standing against a wall in his Choker Whites holding a small glass of warm punch in his hands. He was not a good dancer and it was apparent from the beginning that there were two types of women in attendance; those from a working-class background who were looking for potential husbands and those from the snooty upper class slumming for cheap thrills.

It was in this mindset that he was about to leave when his thoughts were disrupted by one of the matronly chaperones who appeared in front of him, dragging a young woman behind. After a few introductions and some pushing by the deceptively strong chaperone, Kelly found himself out on the dance floor with one of the “slummers”. He was polite and remembered the sage advice contained within the “Newly Commissioned Officer’s Handbook” covering “Social Situations” sub-para “DANCES”.

Mary and Warren married in the Spring of ‘24 shortly before he was promoted to LT and assigned to a West Coast Cruiser Squadron. Mary accompanied him and was soon enveloped by the Navy Wives Club at Hunters Point, San Francisco.

Mary found being a Navy wife both alien and at the same time fulfilling. Mary’s childhood stood her well as she easily entered the social fabric of the physically isolated Navy wives. What she found strange was that the other wives gave no deference to who her family was or how much they were worth. Instead, precedence was loosely based upon the command structures of their husband’s units and the seniority, by age, of the women in the group. Even then, it was more like a family with sisters and aunts and mothers than it was any of the social clubs her mother belonged to. This was a new experience to Mary and one to which she not only adapted but in which she began to thrive.

Mary became the quintessential Navy wife and in ‘28, when Warren was assigned as a Department Head on one of the new Destroyers entering the Atlantic Fleet, she arrived back in Philadelphia in time to deliver their son, Robert. Complications during the delivery meant that Robert would be an only child but the Navy Wives came together around one of their own. The outpouring of support, understanding and sympathy was much more than Mary received from her family and their society friends. This realization reinforced in her mind that she had made the correct choice when she married the shy “man” Kelly over all the “boys” who had chased her throughout high school and college.

Mary and Warren’s life had the usual ups and downs. Promotions were slow in all the Services and especially in the Navy. By ‘39, even with the drum beats of coming war sounding in Europe, Warren was still a LT, even though he was now the XO of DESRON 11. Robert was doing well in high school, Mary was now the “older aunt/sister” within the wives and Warren watched the increase in training temp with worried eyes.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Kelly was acting as the XO for USS New Orleans (CL/CA-32). In 1942 he was selected for his first Independent Command; USS Narragansett. Even though she was not a combatant, she was one of the newest class of ocean going Fleet Tugs and to Kelly she was beautiful.

The nightmare continued for Virgule “Gus” Freeman. The rescue mission had been going okay; they had picked up the children without incident and were well on their way back to the States when things went sideways. This freaking hurricane had come out of nowhere ... one minute it was a Tropical Depression and the next it was a CAT1 hurricane.

They would have still been able to scoot across its path and made port except for the fact that the old girl might have the will, but her guts were worn to hell and gone. The final blow was when her main engine crapped out. The auxiliary generator was maintaining power, for the moment, but without the main, they had been a sitting duck for the hurricane.

The crew was doing what they could to get repairs made while at the same time trying to keep the ship afloat. The real problem was the ship’s owners had been cutting back on maintenance and support in anticipation of sending her off to the breakers soon. The ship’s Engineer knew what he needed to get the engine back on line, but had no spares.

At least the volunteers were keeping the children under control but between the Vaga’s equipment breaking and now the storm, it did not look like he was going to see the morning. With the engines down, they had no control and the old girl was being tossed around and beaten into scrap. He didn’t even know why he stayed manning the radio. There was no help coming and when the winds had torn away his last antenna a few hours prior, his reception had become nil.