The Bryan Adams uber-classic “Summer of ‘69” is a late Boomer anthem that played loudly out of my 8-track and cassette players in my late youth and early adulthood. But the other day, I was reflecting on a summer of my own that was truly enchanted, magical, scary and very formative: the summer of 1979.
I got to this reflection this past Easter Sunday when I saw one of my favorite quotes from St. Pope John Paul II posted: “We are the Easter people and Hallelujah is our song.” That sent me scurrying through the photo files to find this:
This was taken the summer of ’79 and I will tell that story anon but let me back up.
For me, the summer of ’79 started with locking up the giant trash bins that contained the bulk of my collegial earthly possessions and hauling them over from Tolman Hall on the Vanderbilt campus to the basement of the Towers (now gone) for safe keeping while I was gone. It would be the last time I would do that; Senior year was on the horizon. Room cleaned up for inspection, car packed, and I was on my way up to Washington DC in my little stick-shift Toyota Corolla 4-banger with no air-conditioning. I spent the night at the Holiday Inn in Wytheville, Virginia and rolled into Bethesda, Maryland the following afternoon. Mom and Dad were stateside for a change, but not for long – they were headed to their next post, New Delhi, India. Never a dull moment in the Foreign Service!
On May 25, a DC-10 taking off from O’Hare in Chicago, lost its tail engine and plummeted to the ground killing all 271 people on board as well as two on the ground. It was tragic and the only reason I share that is because on May 26th, I boarded a DC-10 out of JFK in New York headed to Lisbon, Portugal. I had flown all over the world but that was the first time I greeted a voyage with some degree of trepidation. I was headed to Portugal as a “Diplomatic Exchange Midshipman” to serve aboard the NRP Baptista de Andrade for 7-weeks in lieu of the traditional “Senior Cruise” that my NROTC classmates were venturing out on.
The Andrade was a small corvette, 278 feet long with a beam of 34 feet and a 10-foot draught. She was nimble but tossed violently in anything but calm seas. But she was home for the next seven weeks…and most of that time was spent at sea. The day I boarded we headed across the Lisbon harbor to a loading pier on the other side of the Tagus River and took on lumber and stores bound for the Azores. The Portuguese Navy doubled as commercial transport and mail carrier for her far strung possessions. The next morning, we sailed for Ponta Delgada in the Azores.
For me, this was a bit of a homecoming. Our family’s first overseas post when I was barely a year old was to the American Consulate in Ponta Delgada and I had some fuzzy memories of the place. I headed to the Consulate when we docked and introduced myself – many of the staff remembered my father and were thrilled to see me. With their direction and some notes from Dad, I found our house and some of the memories came back. More returned when I headed over to the western side of the island to Sete Cidades (Seven Cities) region and the walls of hydrangeas were in bloom. Before we sailed the next afternoon I managed to make it over to Furnas, where the sulfur mud bubbles up – and again, distant cranial tingles came together. Then back to sea.
We made drop-offs at Angra Do Heroismo on the island of Terceira and then Horta on Faial. Incredibly beautiful islands all though the channel crossings are particularly spicy! By now my Portuguese was improving. The first few days had been challenging as Brazilian Portuguese, which I was fluent in, is quite different from the accents of the Mother Tongue. “More or less,” is “mais ou menos” in “Paulista,” the language of Sao Paulo. But in Lisbon, it becomes “maishhh ou menoush.” A “bridge” or “ponte” becomes a “ponchhh.” But once I got my ear dialed in, I could shush with the best of them!
We returned to Lisbon via Madeira, porting in Funchal for a couple of days of R&R for the crew and hiking and sight-seeing for me. Once back in Lisbon, we spent a week preparing to sail north to Germany. We left in mid-June, sailed to Oporto in North Portugal and then through the English Channel up to the mouth of the Elbe River and the entry to the Kiel Canal. We were headed to Kieler Woche (Kiel Week) an annual celebration of sail and warships on the Baltic. We were representing the Portuguese Navy in the NATO force that was assembled there with ships from the US, Britain, Spain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. I had purchased a German/English phrase book and quickly learned that it was better to rely on the kindness of bilingual Germans that to decipher that language. I asked a passerby after departing the ship “Vo is der rieperbahn,” (“Where is the train station?”) as I sought a place to change some dollars into Deutsch Marks. He responded with a series of guttural explanations to which I said “ja,ja” as if I understood and headed in the general direction he had pointed me in. The next time I tried the “Do you speak English” approach and had much better success.
Kiel was lovely and I managed to squeeze in a side trip to Hamburg for a birthday party for our German Navy liaison officer, LT Thomas Hittenrauch. We became good friends and later that week, he invited me to dinner with his parents in Kiel. His father had been the design engineer for the Kiel U-boat pens in World War II. Bit of a tense conversation when he brought up the Allied “skip bomb,” but a great dinner, nevertheless. Late in the week, Kiel disappeared off our stern as we sailed up through the Kattegat and Skagerrak to the North Atlantic for the return to Lisbon.
Friday night, June 29th, I was in downtown Lisbon at an outdoor restaurant enjoying a glass of wine when a orange Shore Patrol VW Beetle pulled up. One got out of the car, approached me, and asked if I was the “American mariner” assigned to the Baptista de Andrade. Upon answering in the affirmative, he said “come with me.” I got in the back seat of the VW and we raced back to the base. Along the way, I learned that a “famous French mariner” had died that morning and that we were being tasked with burying him at sea. Upon boarding the ship, I learned it was Phillipe Cousteau, the son of Jacques Cousteau. He had died in a seaplane crash in the Tagus. The next morning, the casket was loaded onto the helo deck stern. Cousteau, his wife, Phillipe’s wife and several others boarded, and we set to sea.
Cousteau came over to me after he had boarded and asked if I was an American. I said yes, and he said he thought the uniform was familiar. He asked me to speak with Phillipe’s wife, Jan…she was an American from Los Angeles, he thought it would comfort her. Jan was beautiful and obviously distraught. Conversation was difficult, I didn’t know what to say. She let me know that she was three-months pregnant…I had to turn away so she couldn’t see me cry. After about two hours we were in a quiet swell, the sun was high and the wind calm. Cousteau indicated that this was the spot. We stopped the engines and the family gathered at the stern. Our crew slowly lowered the flag draped coffin into the Atlantic. It drifted away from us as they handed the now folded French flag to Phillipe’s mother, Simone. Jacques had an armful of red roses that he gently tossed into the water as the coffin gurgled then disappeared below the surface. It is rare to feel that degree of sadness in one’s life. I desperately wanted to pull my camera out to capture the moment, but out of respect, kept it in my pocket.
There were other trips on the Andrade. A second trip out to the Azores, this time to Corvo and then a quick trip to Gibraltar. On the eve of July 4th, we were headed back to Lisbon. I was asleep in my stateroom (well, actually, we had the infirmary reserved as our stateroom…but that’s another story!) when the Messenger of the Watch woke me up and said it was urgent that I report to the Wardroom. I hastily got dressed and ran up the passageway and one deck to get there. Upon entering, I realized that the entire wardroom was decorated in red, white and blue bunting along with some Portuguese green. The Portuguese officers broke into the Star Spangled Banner and a party ensued. Did I mention that the Portuguese like to drink? After several bottles of wine and cognac had been downed, the Captain was talking to me in a corner and he told me what my future was going to be. “You are going to become an Admiral in the U.S. Navy, then you are going to become a Senator…then you are going to make Portugal the 51st State!” It’s a career path that, alas, I did not follow. But these were damned fine men. I celebrated my birthday back in Ponta Delgada as part of our farewell week of travel. Upon return to Lisbon, I departed the ship. I spent the night in a pousada in downtown Lisbon and headed to the airport. Next stop – Rome.
I was traveling with three passports. Back then, a red jacket meant “official business,” which was the Navy exchange “business for me. A blue jacket meant you were an American citizen…and a black passport, which was for Diplomatic Corps and their dependents. Going through security to leave Portugal, I opened my briefcase and realized all three were sitting on top. The Portuguese security officer grabbed all three and I momentarily thought I was in some kind of trouble. “Tu es um espiao!” he said ominously. (“You are a spy!”) “Nao,” I countered…then he broke into an enormous laugh. Asked me which one I had come in on and if I had enjoyed my visit. I told him it had been “maravilhoso,” and I don’t need to translate that!
One of the great benefits of growing up in the Foreign Service is ending up with friends and family friends all over the world. Dad’s good friend, Gordon Jones, was stationed in Rome and I bunked at his place for a week. A week where I wore out a pair of Wallabees (I wonder if they still make those?) wandering all over Rome. Out to the Catacombs, the baths of Caracalla, the Coliseum, and quite a bit of time at the Vatican…where this tale began.
I was in the piazza in front of St. Peter’s Basilica awaiting the arrival of the relatively new Pope, John Paul II – he was going to be delivering an outdoor address for travelers. I was milling around in the “general admissions” area when a group of German tourists went by headed for a roped off area right on the main drive where the “Popemobile” was going to pass. I tagged along and when asked if I was with the group gave a hearty “ja, ja!” just like I had learned in Kiel…knew that phrase book would come in handy. By pure luck, I ended up on the rope line, on the street. The Pope was approaching, waving at everyone from his open Popemobile. I focused my Asahi Pentax camera taking careful aim – I wanted the perfect shot. Just then, a woman behind me started punching me gently in the back. I turned and she had lifted her son, who looked to be about 3 or 4 and was asking me to put the kid on my shoulders. “AAAARGGH!” I thought…there goes the perfect shot. I put the kid up on my shoulders, lowered the camera to my waist and watched as the Pope drew near. He stopped right in front of me and leaned over to bless the child on my shoulders and as he reached out, I tapped the shutter. It was several months later, when I had the film developed that I realized how lucky I had been. Lucky? Maybe blessed. Because in reflection, it was a magical and spiritually charged moment.
After Rome, I headed to India. I flew from Rome to Frankfurt, Germany and boarded Pan Am 002. That flight stopped in Tehran on its way to New Delhi. It would be one of the last times 002 stopped in Tehran as the “Islamic Revolutionary Guard” was consolidating its position just before the Shah fell and the American Embassy was seized later in November of 1979. There are many more tales about Iran, India and other travels, but I’ll leave it here, reflecting on the blessings of a child on my shoulders and a youth spent in magical travel.
I sent this lovely piece to many of our friends, and already I've received several delightful replies. I hope you'll continue to move ahead and maybe we'll get s book out of it. Muito saudades!
Maravilhoso! We are anxiously awaiting the next chapter.