No, I said to the executive officer, Lieutenant Jose Gamboa, I didn’t want to put together a cruisebook for our ship. I was the operations officer of the tank landing ship Washoe County (LST?1165). The year was 1968, and my reason for objecting was that I had plenty of other jobs already. He told me to find a way. His reason for the tasking was that I had worked on my high school yearbook.
So I wound up as the editor, writer, and sometime photographer, and did the page spreads. Pulling out the book nearly 50 years later, I cringe at some of those layouts with photos stacked up like children’s building blocks. But the content is still useful: a history of the ship, information on Washoe County, Nevada, photos of the crew members, and sections on the many places we operated.
Fortunately, the crew included some willing contributors: Electronics Technician Dennis Gratton and Enginemen Allen Melvin and Denny Steenbergen supplied photos. Lieutenant (junior grade) Ted Sattler was the business manager. Since the crew consisted of only about 100 men, we didn’t have the resources of a bigger ship and couldn’t include many original color photos. We could use only the color separations that the publisher in Tokyo already had on hand from previous books.
Seaman Ed Picard, our artist, drew cartoons depicting the activities of the various departments and did a great cover image. I came up with the title: WestPac Workhorse. We were homeported in Yokosuka, Japan. Ed drew a picture of a bedraggled horse because our ship, after all, was not, say, a glamorous carrier or guided-missile destroyer. Officially, the Washoe County was an amphibious warfare ship, but it seemed that much of what she did involved carrying equipment and supplies from Okinawa to South Vietnam. So Ed’s drawing had the horse carrying a load of ammo, a gun, and some boxes. The saddle blanket included the ship’s hull number, and the horse—in that era before political correctness—wore a coolie hat.
Recently I joined a group of Washoe County alumni for an enjoyable reunion in Sacramento, California. Some were from my time, and I got to know others who were on board earlier. It was as if the pictures in the old cruisebook had come to life. Faces and midsections are now rounder in some cases, and the dark hair of youth has often turned gray or white. I recognized Radioman Ron Peterka immediately. He remembered circulating message boards during the night, a climb up Mount Fuji, and being among crew members who shared a multicourse dinner in Taiwan.
Hull Technician Gene Vise, who was a fireman back then, now wore on his ball cap the insignia of a chief petty officer, which he eventually became. We recalled the time that the USS Arlington (AGMR-2) transported a spare propeller for the attack cargo ship Skagit (AKA-105) from the States to Yokosuka. We loaded it in the middle of the night and then delivered it to Sasebo, offloaded, and returned without having any liberty. The episode was known to the crew as the “Skagit Screw Job.”
Yeoman Gary Karst, who still has plenty of dark hair, worked in the ship’s office. I reminded him that another man in the office was Yeoman Clatis Kelly, who had come to us from the rocket-launching ship St. Francis River (LSMR-525). Kelly’s report was that the only R&R his previous crew got was “reloading rockets.” Lon Kurtzman, a fire controlman, didn’t have that beard when he was on board ship, nor did Seaman Dick Hamill have his nifty handlebar mustache. I was glad they introduced themselves.
Hospital Corpsman Gary Blackburn, who serves as the treasurer for the reunion group, recalled the ingenuity needed to deal with injuries and maladies in a ship without a doctor. We remembered the sadness that shrouded the crew in 1968 when a trailer fell and crushed one of our seamen while he was working in the tank deck. Another seaman lost part of a leg when a mooring line parted. One feature of the reunion was a memorial service at which we heard a roll call of departed shipmates.
Denny Steenbergen and his ever-cheerful wife, Bonnie, are the reunion coordinators. Their work and organizational skills include checking out reunion sites, making arrangements with hotels and tour companies, and taking care of the many other details. One of our tours took us to the California state Vietnam memorial. It features a shiny metal map that includes the areas where we operated. My wife, Karen, and I also took a side trip to Reno, where we saw the Washoe County Courthouse pictured in the cruisebook.
Apparently, every reunion group needs a resident comedian, and for the Washoe County that is Bernie LaFianza, a supply officer who left shortly before I reported in 1966. He told a story about Lieutenant (junior grade) Dan Dutro, the man who trained me in underway watch-standing. According to Bernie, Dan was the in-port officer of the deck one time when a chief engineman came back from liberty carrying a couple of bags that appeared to contain bottles. As Bernie reported, Dan said: “Now I’m going to turn my back, and I want to hear two splashes.” Two splashes ensued, and the chief was seen scampering away in his stocking feet. Did that really happen? Does it matter? Great story either way.
All these years later, I’m glad the exec insisted that I assemble the cruisebook.