Growing Up a Navy Junior. 1947-1965

Growing Up a Navy Junior 

 

I was born during the early post World War II years, 1947. I was the second try as my mother had a miscarriage something I only learned of very late in my life. That kind of thing was ordinary but just not spoken about. Glad my parents kept trying. The post-war mood of America was one of huge relief that the war was over and exuberance that the allies had won, and the future looked safer for all peoples. There was so much going on in the US with demand for workers and farmers to get back to building and producing, and to feeding the population. American industry and agriculture quickly became a major economic force involved in supporting and providing resources to the rebuilding of nations that had been devastated by the Axis countries in Europe and Asia.

My father had decided to remain in the Navy and continue to serve as a Line Officer in the Surface Warfare branch. His assignment at the time of my birth was Aide to the Commandant of the Third Naval District, RADM Monroe Kelly, Headquartered in the Brooklyn Naval Yard in New York City. Admiral Kelly and his family were to be lifetime friends and very involved and influential in my dad’s career and our family’s personal lives as long as they lived. Around this time, I was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in the same hospital my mom was born in, and the hometown of her parents. I learned much later that the doctor who delivered me had been engaged to my mom during the war before she met my father. Talk about small world. 

Of course, these early years are full of vague memories but some of them are so strong I can still recall them very vividly. Easter egg hunt in Key West, Florida,1950. The wrap around porch in a house in Charleston, South Carolina, that was shady and fun to play hide and seek. Traveling cross-country to Monterey, California, and seeing my first cowboy in Reno, Nevada. During this time period I can remember some day care scenes and vaguely going to kindergarten, mostly being forced to take a nap. During my school years I went to school in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Arlington, Sweden, Virginia Beach, London, and France. Ten schools in three different countries. I spent four years living overseas in Spain, Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom, and France. The last three years of high school attending Department of Defense schools in London and outside Paris.

 

Over the course of my years growing up I was afforded wonderful experiences and amazing travel adventures. I remember spending summers during my elementary years living with my mom’s parents, Gunnar and Ellen Gundersen, at Ortley Beach on the New Jersey shore. There were lots of beach time and I remember going to my first amusement park and driving bumper cars. I remember learning to ski on sand dunes. I also worked as a carpenter’s helper for my grandfather building an additional cottage to add to the four cottages they already had and which were rented out during the summer. I loved working with my grandfather and loved watching the construction progress. 

When I was eleven, 1959, my parents sent me overseas to join Ellen and Gunnar in Europe for a year. They were traveling and visiting with their families in Sweden and Norway. I flew for the first time, by myself, from the US to Madrid, Spain, a twelve-hour flight across the Atlantic on a TWA Super Constellation prop driven four engine airliner. 

 

 

 

We spent the summer on the southern coast of Spain. I visited Malaga and Gibraltar. We then traveled by train north through the Pyrenees Mountains on the border of Spain and France to Paris for a short stay. 

 

 

Then on to Germany where my grandmother took delivery of a VW Karmen Ghia which we drove to Copenhagen for another short stay and then ferried over to Sweden. I spent the remainder of the summer working on my great, great uncles farm in mucking out the stables, driving the haying wagon and forking hay into the hay loft. Long, long days but so much fun. I quickly became fluent in Swedish being among so many Swedes and working alongside them all day. I fished with my grandfather and rowed all over the lake we were staying at and made a great friend who was summering with his family near us. He and his family took me home with them to Stockholm for a short stay. Lasse, my friend, father was a police officer and I remember being so fascinated and interested in what he did. 

We traveled over to Norway and visited with family. My grandparents left me with some cousins in Oslo who owned a big bakery shop and I worked in the shop for a week making bread and eating pastries. We did sightseeing and drove down to my grandfather’s birthplace and saw friends and family and went fishing in the fjord. I remember that fishing thrip because we caught so many fish we filled up the bottom of the row boat, always a row boat, and my job to row. 

By then it was time to return to Sweden and for me to go to school. Gunnar and Ellen left me with a cousin and her husband, she a teacher, my teacher, and her husband the principal of the school. Great experience and I had a role to teach and talk about life in the US. The last part of this idyllic adventure was a cruise home traveling first class on a Norwegian American cruise ship, SS Stavangerfjord. 

 

In 1962 my family traveled First Class on the SS United States to England where we lived for two years, my sophomore and junior years, in London. Highlights of family adventures in England were rock climbing and hiking in Wales, renting a cabin cruiser and sailing up the Thames River through the locks, and a youth ski trip to Austria, traveling by train with a group of 80 kids to a small ski resort called Kitzbuhl. The train trip was twelve hours straight and so much fun. My longtime girlfriend took this time to break up with me and it absolutely crushed me. Still managed to ski and ice skate and get drunk for the first time on schnapps.

 

Right after the Christmas break that year my parents moved to southern France, Villefranche-sur-Mer, on the Rivera. My dad’s new assignment was Executive Officer of the USS Springfield CLG-7, U.S. Sixth Fleet Flagship home-ported in Villefranche. I was taken in by my best friend’s family and stayed in England to finish out my junior year. I never lived full time with my family again, as after joining my family at the end of the school year in London, and spending the summer break on the Cote D’Azur, I went to a boarding school outside of Paris for my senior year, and back to the US then after graduating to attend The Naval Academy.