At a stage in life when I regularly receive membership solicitations from the American Association of Retired Persons, it is appropriate to examine the deposits in my memory bank. Doing so reinforces what I have known for 30 years: My favorite year was 1969.
The year began with a telephone call from Yokosuka, Japan, to my detailer in the Bureau of Personnel. A hearty voice on the other end of the line said, “Well, Mr. Stillwell, it looks like I’ve got a job for you on the ‘wagon.’” That could only mean the battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62), the ship at the absolute top of my dream sheet. I was so excited I barely slept that night.
Impatiently, I waited until April, when I could fly across the Pacific and report to Long Beach for duty in what was then the world’s only active battleship. By coincidence, my brother Mark— also a lieutenant, junior grade—was in Long Beach at that point. Our activities over the next several weeks were part of making 1969 such an enjoyable year. During part of this period, he was assigned to the amphibious assault ship Princeton (LPH-5) and later to the attack transport Talladega (LPA-208), which was preparing for decommissioning.
Mark was the transport’s first lieutenant, which meant he frequently was on deck or on the pier, supervising the offloading of equipment. Though he had been in college and officer candidate school only a few years earlier, someone who admired his work mistook him for a warrant officer. This was quite a high compliment.
Because we both had cars, the Los Angeles freeway system was our pathway to a great many activities. Together we went to baseball games, restaurants, Disneyland, double dates at movies, met some young women at dance nights at the officers club, and generally took in the sights. One night we went to a party at the apartment of a fellow New Jersey officer. We had dinner, took off for a baseball game at Dodger Stadium, got back to the party around midnight, then stuck around until things broke up at perhaps 0400 or 0500. Such stamina seldom is available 30 years later.
Serving in the New Jersey was an absolute joy—the greatest job I’ve ever had, military or civilian. The ship has majestic beauty and strength—a real work of art. To be able to eat, sleep, and work there made every day a good one. I always have a hard time believing that the New Jersey is an inanimate object, for the heart is not to be denied by the reasoned skepticism of the mind.
Soon after I went aboard, my new shipmates and I went through some training to prepare for the battleship’s planned second deployment to Vietnam. We also made a midshipman training cruise to San Francisco, Tacoma, Hawaii, and San Diego. What a great way to spend a summer. For instance, I saw the first moon landing on the lifeguard’s television at Waikiki Beach and spent several evenings dating a woman whom I’d met in Long Beach; she was going to summer school in Hawaii. The pace in Hawaii was such that I welcomed the duty every fourth day for the chance to catch up on my rest.
Of all my New Jersey shipmates, the one who has the warmest spot in my memory is Commander Jim Elfelt, the executive officer. He was one of the world’s greatest gentlemen. The stereotype of an XO is that of a hard-nose who plays the bad guy while the skipper is the father figure. But Elfelt wasn’t that way at all. He was Mr. Nice Guy, yet highly respected and highly effective in his job. He had a gift that very few people possess. When you were with him, he made you feel as if you were the only other person in the world.
Later that year, when the New Jersey was decommissioned in Bremerton, Washington, he put a note in the last plan of the day, telling the men of the battleship that if they ever were in the same port as he, he hoped they would look him up. This was not an idle statement. Around 1980, when I was on the staff of Proceedings, a rear admiral in whites walked into my office unannounced. It was Elfelt, who had come just to say hello and visit for a while. I was truly saddened a few years after that when he died too young from cancer. The world could use more men like him.
The announcement of the battleship’s impending decommissioning was both a shock and a downer. It came in late August, just as we were making final preparations for a deployment to provide shore bombardment off the coast of South Vietnam. Our skipper, Captain Ed Snyder, was relieved by Captain Robert Peniston, a man who had served in the New Jersey as his first assignment out of the Naval Academy in 1946. Now, instead of taking her to war, he prepared her for the mothball fleet.
The loss of the ship meant I left the active Navy in October, more than a year earlier than I had intended. My journey home to the Midwest took me to a reserve unit, so I essentially was inactivated when the ship was. I flew out to Bremerton in mid-December for the decommissioning. The dreary weather fit with the mood of virtually all present.
Two weeks after that came an event that was part of making 1969 my favorite year. I met Karen, my future wife, in Minneapolis. I could not have done so if the battleship had gone to Vietnam that autumn and winter as scheduled. Fate and circumstance are interesting companions as we take our journeys through life.