Saturday, March 30, 2019

OUT OF THE PAST

I found a couple of boxes the other day on my porch. They were sent by an old friend. His picture is even in the blog! The boxes held a bunch of my old awards and medals and photographs and journals and old insignia and patches from a number of ships, places and other commands and my First Day Cover of the launching of USS Nimitz. I had just mentioned the last item the day before and how back when I was in the 7th grade in Newport Rhode Island, I was a library assistant for a lady named Catherine Nimitz Lay. It turns out that the school librarian was the daughter of Admiral Nimitz and she was the lady who christened the ship at the launching. At the end of the school year she gave me this.







I might scan the booklet and put the whole thing in here later this weekend.

8 comments:

Rib said...

Please do!

SCOTTtheBADGER said...

You knew a Nimitz! How cool is that?

HMS Defiant said...

Done. The scans of each page are located in Fighting Words under the page, About the Author. Enjoy!

HMS Defiant said...

As I read her biography I see that I was lucky enough to meet and work for her during her last year at Thompson Jr. High before she retired in 1974 and moved to Wellfleet, MA. She was a very nice lady and surprised me with the ceremonial package and first day cover at the end of the school year.

Brig said...

How amazing!

OldAFSarge said...

Wow.

My son-in-law is in Nimitz' Air Wing.

HMS Defiant said...

What I found most amazing was that I mentioned that I once had a first day cover from the launching of USS Nimitz just the day before and lo and behold, the next day, it showed up in a box with a number of other memories David Harvey shipped to me in a couple of boxes. That was amazing too.
You'd have liked her. I bet she had a pink fishing pole too.

HMS Defiant said...

I think older than Nimitz is the Truman and I cannot believe the Navy is proposing to sacrifice a good ship to buy one 3 x more expensive that manifestly does not work ten years from now. Hopefully Nimitz will be around for another decade or two although I look at the cost of complex refueling overhauls and wonder.