From Fitron 174 To Utron 10

There is an old idiom “out of the frying pan, into the fire,” meaning that a person escapes from a bad situation, but gets into a worse one.  I had thoughts of this when I transferred from VF-174 at NAS Cecil Field, Jacksonville, Florida to VU-10 located on Leeward Point, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Naval Base.  My transfer orders were sent shortly after the culmination of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.  Then in December of that year our first child was born while I was in training for my next assignment.  In no hurry to enter the sanctuary of our most recent possible foe, it was the following June before I finally left Florida.  I then remained on leave (vacation) in New York for a further 30 days, leaving there on July 19, 1963 for Norfolk, Virginia for further transfer to what became lovingly known as Gitmo as time passed.  Photo is an aircraft from VP-18 flying over the Russian ship carrying Russian aircraft to Cuba.  This is nearly the same type aircraft I perched up in that nose bubble in during 1959.

I arrived there August 2, 1963 as an AMS 1, or First Class Petty Officer.  However, I had passed a Navy-wide written test the previous February for Chief Petty Officer, and had been selected for advancement on November 16, 1963.  Thus, after Hurricane Flora visited from October 4 – October 8, I was initiated into the Chief ranks in November, and on that very same day moved into the Chief’s quarters until such time as my wife and son might arrive to share this island paradise with me.  Six days later a fellow Chief entered my room with the news that President Kennedy had just been shot and killed in Dallas while riding in an automobile.  The photo was taken at the time I became a Chief Petty Officer.

Almost exactly a month later, just in time for Christmas, my wife and son arrived on a MATS flight from Norfolk to move into our new quarters at 79 B, Granadillo Circle.  Hardly had we got settled in, when it was time for a late night trip to the Base Hospital for our first daughter to arrive on February 29, 1964.  Now we were a family of four where we had only been a couple during the Missile Crisis which seemed so long ago, but actually had only been a little more than a year.  We spent more than three years at Gitmo and learned to love it, but more about those good years another time.  The building with the red cross at the top is, of course, the Gitmo Base Hospital.