Turtle Rock

Today, March 11, marks five years since we arrived in Virginia, our new home, where we began the adventure of building our life-long dream home. We truly spent the last 50 years dreaming and planning for the country life in a log home.

The dream began shortly after our wedding in 1973, in St. Peter’s Chapel on Mare Islsnd Naval Shipyard. The oldest chapel on a U.S. naval base. Incidentally, buried in the nearby Cemetary is the daughter of Francis Scott Key. That’s how old that naval installation is. If you don’t know who he is, you owe it to yourself to find out. The chapel itself actually displays some of the very first Tiffany stained glass windows ever made.

We lived our first year in Dayton, Ohio where I had been learning the machinist trade for two years prior, apart from one another. Twelve months after our wedding, my application for a machinist position at Mare Island had been accepted and we were soon on our way back to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Interviewed by General Foreman, Jack Tamargo on Thursday, September 5, I was informed that because I was self taught and had only been working in the trade for three years, he couldn’t justify hiring me as a journeyman machinist further explaining that it took an apprentice four years to reach that level. Initially, I felt betrayed. Driving more that 2,000 miles, I had left my job in Ohio and come all that way only to be ultimately denied the position I had been led to believe was mine.

Friday, September 6, I began my first day of work in Shop 31 for Howard Weaver. Saturday, September 7, President Nixon placed a freeze on all government hiring. I had just barely avoided what could have been a catastrophic turn of events – driving cross country after leaving that bird-in-the-hand only to find myself unemployed. By swallowing my pride and accepting the conditions set forth by Mr. Tamargo, I had unwittingly avoided strike three. I was instead, on base and still in the game.

I had been working a few months in Shop 31 when I was placed on loan to Shop 38, the outside machine shop when they had found themselves short handed because of the increased workflow and the government hiring freeze. The temporary assignment was not to exceed 3 months.

One year later, I returned to Shop 31 after someone remembered I had been loaned out. Not long after my return, Mr. Weaver began encouraging me to apply for the journeyman machinist position. I was instead promoted to WG-9 from WG-8, one step below a WG-10, journeyman machinist. I’m sure that Mr. Tamargo, concerned with appearances, was behind holding me back. On the other hand, throughout my Shop 31 career, I witnessed far too many inexperienced and unqualified people receive promotions within the machine shop in the name of “upward mobility.”

Not long after my promotion, I requested a transfer to another section of the machine shop to broaden my work experience so I could earn that elusive journeyman machinist position. After five years on the job, my supervisor, Bill Nunes, asked why I hadn’t applied for the journeyman position. I explained that I had become discouraged as result of Mr. Tamargo’s comments and reluctance. Shaking his head and throwing his arms into the air in frustration, Mr. Nunes told me that he felt comfortable assigning me any job that came into the section with the confidence that I could complete it just as well as anyone else that worked for him. “Complete the application and I will write a letter of recommendation to supplement it,” he said. After the application date closed, it wasn’t long before I received that what had been, until then, the elusive promotion to Journeyman Machinist. Grateful for his support, I continued working for Mr. Nunes in the lathe section of the machine shop for a long time after.

When I was invited to work in the exclusive nuclear section of the machine shop, I wasn’t very excited about it. I had heard a lot of negative and discouraging views from others about the constraints and affects of nuclear work and possible radiation exposure. Finally, after several attempts by the nuclear section, I decided to find out for myself if what I had been told was true. Accepting the invitation, I first learned that only the exceptional machinists were invited into the nuclear program and that their number one priority was strict “procedure compliance.” Anyone who couldn’t strictly comply with procedures was sent back to the “black iron” area of the machine shop, which was where the non nuclear production took place. I spent most of my Shop 31 career in the nuclear section, where my supervisor, Roger Nelson was a great mentor. Eventually moving into inspection, I began performing in-house quality assurance inspections on all manufactured parts before they were allowed to be shipped out to other shops in the industrial area of the shipyard for use in the nuclear reactor compartments of the submarines.

While working in the inside machine shop on mare island naval shipyard, we lived with Pam’s parents until we got an apartment in Napa, California.

In 1976, we became the proud parents of a baby boy. Later that year, we purchased our first home in nearby Vacaville. Pam and I loved that community because it was so much like the community we had both grown up in – Vallejo, the home of Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Not long after we moved into our new home, I joined the Jim Fixx running revolution that was taking the country by storm.

In 1980, however, after our second son was born, I developed shin splints and gave up running and started bodybuilding – an activity that I loved and continued for 20 years.

As I gained more experience as a machinist, I began to realize what I had repeatedly been told by my mathematics teachers throughout my childhood – for everything in life, there is a mathematical equation. While never doubting what I had been told, I never really experienced it until I had completely delved into the machinist trade. That understanding, led me to developing certain machining techniques that I had discovered without ever thinking that no one else was aware of and certainly wasn’t being taught in the vestibule. I felt that a whole new world was opening up to me through numbers and mathematics. I was truly able to accurately add five-figured numbers in my head as fast as you can enter them into a calculator and get the results. Sometimes faster. I saw the relationship to many things in my life through mathematical equations. It was then that things began to click in my head and I began to perform my job at a new level of confidence. And it wasn’t limited only to my work. I also began to create new techniques in my personal workouts and realizing greater gains as a bodybuilder as well.

Pam and I had been visiting my dad after he had purchased a new refrigerator and was being delivered. The two-man delivery team placed the new refrigerator about ten feet away from the existing refrigerator before removing that one and taking it back out to the truck. Standing at eye level, I noticed the cupboard above the old refrigerator looked like it might be a problem with the fit. Looking at it more closely, I determined that it would just fit. My dad noticed the pending issue, however he wasn’t as optimistic as I was. He was shaking his head as I assured him that it would not only fit, but it would clear by 1/4.” Snapping back that I couldn’t possibly see that difference. A glaring difference to me, I offered a bet but he wouldn’t take it. When the two guys returned, they too said they thought it might not fit. Again, I said, 1/4″ clearance. Shaking their heads, they proceeded to gently slide the new refrigerator into its place. I got the ruler from the kitchen drawer and measured the clearance space at the top. It cleared the cupboard by exactly 1/4.” Pam stood nearby, smiling, never saying a word. Dad said he never would have believed it and that it was a lucky guess on my part. I told him that as a machinist, I deal with tolerances of 0.015″ and 1/4″ looks like a mile to me.

When there was a position created to support the supervisors in the production machine shop and help specifically with continued assistance and training of the apprentices, I applied. It was a WG-11 Work Leader promotion that seemed to be a natural step into the supervisor position for anyone who may be so inclined. Later, when the position for apprentice instructor became available in the vestibule, I was personally approached by the person in charge of that area. When he suggested I apply, I regrettably informed him that I wasn’t sure I was the right person because I was self taught in the trade and had no experience with the formal education aspect of the job where I would be required to also teach trade theory in a classroom setting and make my own curriculum. Not only was I very unsure of my ability to do that, I was sure that there must have been someone else better qualified than myself. He further encouraged me to apply and assured me that he would take care of everything else. After giving it more thought, I concluded that he probably only wanted me to apply so he could hire someone else and be able to say that the new-hire was selected from a pool of applicants, leaving me out in the cold so to speak. After submitting my application, much to my surprise, I was hired and the thought of me having to create my own curriculum while teaching trade theory scared me to death!

It was during those years that Pam and I had purchased not one, but two country properties in Northern California where we had planned on building our dream log home where we could retire to.

As my first group of apprentices were nearing the end of their tenure in the vestibule, we learned that the shipyard was scheduled for permanent shutdown. That class was to be the last apprentices in the Mate Island Naval Shipyard apprenticeship program. I returned with them to the production machine shop as a Work Leader in the section I had been in before going to the vestibule.

There was a new supervisor in that section and when he has to be off to have surgery, I was assigned a temporary appointment to fill in for him. He has been gone for just over three months when I was sweeping the office floor and herniated three discs in my lower back when I sneezed while bent over, sweeping the dust into the dust pan, suddenly bringing an end to my bodybuilding career.

I was bedridden for three months before I was given the okay to have surgery so I could walk and return to work. When I did eventually return to work, things were very different and a lot of people were already gone. After I left the shipyard, I was placed in vocational rehabilitation before going to school in the Napa Valley Community College, enrolled in the Respiratory Therapy Program. After completing my third of four semesters, I changed direction and followed my heart into Television Production Program at Solano Community College, where I graduated top of my class and spent the next 20 years in the second career that I absolutely loved.

I retired at the end of 2020. Pam retired a few months later and we both sold everything we had and moved to Virginia where we built our dream log home on five wooded acres. It’s now been five years since we arrived and we both live our lives on our little piece of heaven on earth.