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USS KITTIWAKE
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Shipmates We've Found |
Still Looking For |
Sea Stories |
Taps |
Photos Wanted ]
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Welcome aboard. This page is put up and maintained by the reunion committee for the men who served
aboard the USS Kittiwake between 1968 and 1972. If you were one of us, or you are the wife, son, daughter or
grandchild of one of us, you are in the right place and we are glad you found it.
The committee is four of us who got to talking at a Legion hall in the spring of 1998 and decided that thirty years was long enough to go without seeing each other. We started with a shoebox of old addresses and one Christmas card list. As of this month we have located 61 shipmates from the '68-'72 crew. We know there are a lot more of you out there. Please read on, and please write. |
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Kittiwake Reunion 2000 — Branson, Missouri Friday, May 19 through Sunday, May 21, 2000 After a mail-in vote of the shipmates we have found, Branson won out over Norfolk and San Diego, mostly because it is in the middle of the country and the wives said there would be something to do. Hotel: We have a block of rooms held at a hotel on the strip in Branson at a group rate of $59 a night (two people, double beds). The block is held under "Kittiwake Reunion" until April 15, 2000. E-mail the committee for the hotel name and reservation number. We are not posting the hotel details on the open web page, but we will send them to any shipmate or family member who asks. Registration: $45 per person, which covers the hospitality room (Friday and Saturday), the Saturday night banquet dinner, a memorial service Sunday morning, and a reunion packet with a crew roster and name badge. Spouses and family are welcome and pay the same $45. Children under 12 are free at the banquet. Schedule so far:
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Shipmates We've Found First name, last initial and rating as of when they served. We are not posting full names, addresses or phone numbers on the internet. If you are on this list and want to be in touch with somebody else on it, e-mail the committee and we will pass your letter along.
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Still Looking For These are men we remember but have not been able to locate. The last address anybody had for most of them is from the early 1970s. If you know where any of these shipmates are, or if you are one of them, please e-mail the committee. Even "I think he moved to Texas" helps.
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Sea Stories The difference between a fairy tale and a sea story: a fairy tale starts "Once upon a time." A sea story starts "This is no lie." These three are no lie. Send yours and we will add it. The Great Paint Locker Incident (1970) As told by Bob S., BM1. Some of you will remember that the deck division had a chief who was very particular about the color of haze gray, and that the supply system that summer sent us haze gray that was, to his eye, not the right haze gray. It was too light. He said it made us look like a "Coast Guard cutter." So he had us mix in a little black from the boot topping cans to darken it up, and we painted the whole port side that way. Then the black ran out and the starboard side got the light gray straight from the can. We came into port with two different colored sides. The captain walked down the pier, looked at her, walked around to the other side, looked at her, and came back and said one word to the chief, which I will not repeat here since there might be grandchildren reading. We repainted the port side the next week. Andy K. said he was going to write a book about it. Andy, if you're out there, how's the book coming? Thanksgiving, 1969 As told by Earl J., CS1. We were at sea for Thanksgiving in '69 and the cooks (that was me and Roy and Jerry and Leroy) had been promised turkeys. What came aboard at the last port was turkey, all right: canned turkey roll, about two hundred pounds of it. Well, we did what we could. We got the Supply Officer to give up the last of the real butter, we made about forty pies from canned pumpkin, and Roy figured out that if you basted the turkey roll and browned it under the broiler it almost looked like the real thing if the lights were low. The XO came through the mess decks and said it was the best Thanksgiving dinner he'd had in the Navy. I have always suspected he was being kind. But the mess decks were quiet that day, everybody thinking about home, and I think the pies helped. That is when I decided to open a restaurant when I got out, which I did, and I still make forty pies every Thanksgiving. The Mail Buoy As told by Fred B., BMC. Every ship in the Navy has done this to a new man and I am not ashamed to say the Kittiwake was no exception. In the spring of 1971 we got a seaman aboard fresh from boot camp, a nice kid from Nebraska who had never seen the ocean before the bus dropped him at the pier. Somebody told him that the ship's mail was dropped off at a mail buoy, and that since it was his first cruise, he had the honor of standing the mail buoy watch. So there he was on the bow with a boat hook and a life jacket and a set of sound-powered phones plugged into nothing, for four hours, in the dark, singing out "no buoy in sight" every fifteen minutes. The whole crew took turns going up to check on him. He figured it out about the time the sun came up and took it like a champ. That kid made chief himself before he retired, and he tells me he has done it to at least a dozen new men since, so I guess it evens out. That kid is on our "found" list. He knows who he is. |
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Taps Shipmates who have crossed the bar. We will remember them Sunday morning in Branson, and every day. Arthur G. · Bernard T. · Clyde M. · Donald F. · Eugene R. Floyd W. · Howard S. · James L. · Lester P. · Raymond K. Robert D. · Walter A. · William H. If you know of a shipmate who should be on this list, please let the committee know so that he can be remembered with the others. Families of these men are welcome at the reunion as our guests; the registration fee is waived. |
Photos WantedWe would like to put together a photo album for the hospitality room and, if we can figure out the scanner, for this page. If you have snapshots from aboard ship or on liberty from 1968-72, we would be grateful for copies. Please don't send originals. Get a reprint made at the drugstore and mail that, and write on the back who is in it and when, as best you remember. E-mail the committee for the mailing address.
Right now the only picture we have on the computer is one of the ship at the pier that a shipmate's daughter scanned for
us, and it came out mostly black. We are working on it.
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