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The Navy taught me a lot of
values about teamwork. Everyone plays an important
part of that team and stuff and without the
team-- I mean, without you doing your part as
a team, you might hurt the team and you fail
in the long run.
When we were
trying to get ship ready for commission, the
U.S.S. Chief was up in Wisconsin and they came
down, say we had to be out of there by the 11th
of October. If not, we're going to winter over
up there. And it was a lot of stuff that needed
to be done on the ship, painting. The
antennas weren't put back up in time. Right
when we were leaving Wisconsin we were going
through the locks. We were going up in Canada
and everybody was doing their part of their
jobs and stuff, but the deck boatswain mates,
which are like the deck guys and stuff, they're
out there trying to get the ship through these
locks, which was very close. I mean, these guys
been up like 13 hours a day and nighttime just
trying to maneuver the ship through this small
channel. And we all pitched in as a team, you
know, because those guys, they were tired, and
we were helping them do their jobs as well as
doing our jobs. I really can't put it in perspective,
but I saw how dreary and tired these guys were
and I gave them a pat on the back. Yes, man,
you guys doing a good job, you know. It was
just telling somebody that they'd done a good
job, showing them that you appreciate the work
that they are doing. It helps them out, too,
and it helps build morale, makes them want to
keep going. But that was a challenging time.
It took us three days
to get through the channels up in Canada and
stuff and these guys working 13, 15 hours a
night with two or three hours of sleep, then
had to go back out there and stand watches.
That compelled me to go ahead and learn all
about my rating plus their ratings as well so
I can help them out and
stuff in case one of them happen to fall down
just being tired. I know I can be--go in there
and pick up his slack for him and stuff. And
that helps out everybody, I guess, being onboard
a ship, you know. If you have a fire out there,
it's up to everybody on that crew to help put
that fire out because being on the way
in the middle of the ocean, you can't call the
fire department or nobody
to come help put this fire out.
Back
in '85 we had a fire onboard our ship down in
the--what we call it, the incinerator and stuff,
and it was--it happened like 2:00 in the morning.
A lot of people in their bunks asleep and they
sounded the alarm. Everybody just jumped up,
went to their spaces and said they had a fire
that was out of control down in that compartment,
so I was a part of the fire fighting team. We
had to dress up, don our gear and go down there
and fight that fire, and it had got so hot down
there where a couple of the guys had passed
out. So we had to call back up to the repair
lockers and get reliefs to come in there, say,
like every five to ten minutes just to give
them a break because it was so hot it there.
And if it wasn't for everybody pulling together
at time, we could have lost a big part of the
ship and could have lost a couple lives as well.
My adrenaline
was going through my veins, blood pumping and
stuff. I just wanted to get this fire over with
so we can go and assess the damage. I didn't
want to sink out there, so I just made sure--
we just wanted to make sure that fire was out.
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