Bill Engelhardt

Bill Engelhardt

May 28, 1962

Al Peffley

I worked at the Space Needle in the restaurant with George Brower for a while before he went off to boot camp for the Air Force in 1965 or '66. Bruce Bliven's oldest son, Brad, works on the Needle's elevator system these days. [It's a very different world today after we lost JFK's and RR's patriotic and insightful leadership. The Clowns in America and a group of foreign banking tyrants terminated JFK, but failed to kill Ronny.]
 

Gregg Wilson

Memorial Day.

Let us remember two young Marines who were killed in combat in Viet Nam:

Jim Pollard and Craig Mulford.

Bill Engelhardt

Bob Beveridge

Remembering an Uncle serving on the Arizona.  The CO of my submarine allowed me to stand topside and "dip our colors" as we passed the Arizona on a trip out of Pearl Harbor  "back in the day".  i saw a TV program last week about using an ROV to explore the ship and they explored the wardroom where he was likely located when the attack occurred....

Lynn Britton

Bob, were you on the Daniel Webster with Kip Martin?

Al Peffley

RIP Craig, Jim, and Ross. You gave the ultimate sacrifice for our Constitutional Republic. God bless your spirits and souls, BROTHERS IN ARMS. You are not forgotten!

I miss Kip Martin. Our oldest son was a "bubblehead" and attack sub "nuke" operator for over 20 years. I flew ASW aircrew out of NAS' Sandpoint & Whidbey... We are a US Navy family.

LCpl. James Pollard, USMC

Gregg Wilson

I forgot about Ross Phillips. Being a corpsman, he was actually a  Marine.

Dick Surman

Actually he would have been a Navy corpsman serving with the Marines.  Standard Navy protocol.

Gregg Wilson

He walked with Marine infantry. He was a Marine.

When I was a Marine forward observer, a corpsman crouched beside me was the best buddy I ever had.

Dick Surman

Thanks Greg.  And I get it, those corpsmen serving with the guys in the foxholes were heroes and "were" marines.  I only knew of the official relationship from talking to Navy buds.  I was at 30,000 feet most of the time and did not share your experiences. I knew Ross when he was Hillmon and we hung.  Lost track after we graduated.  Thanks for the word.

Dick Surman

BTW, I apologize for misspelling your first name...not paying attention.  Cheers.

Gregg Wilson

Not a problem, Dick. However protocol is an awfully BIG word for a Marine. We generally talked in single syllables.

Dick Surman

I'll keep that in mind and speak slowly as well in the future. 

Al Peffley

All three of those guys were part of the Navy. I remember one thing that they had in common in high school was their warm and humble smile when a person was talking with them. They were all special young men with the right atitude and no big ego. Jim and Mulf are buried at the Willamette National Cemetary in Northeast Portland (above Foster Road east, off of I-205). https://www.cem.va.gov/CEMs/nchp/willamette.asp

Corpsman were trained like Combat Engineers and SOF operatives because they were deployed at the pointy end of the ground assault, riverine ops, and beachhead "spear" interdiction operations. They were your best buddy when the sh*t hit the fan, no matter where the combat action was at (land, water, or air). I flew with a trained Corpsman and qualified Seal who was assigned to the river ops "Dragon Boats" with US Army Riverine Units in the 'Nam deltas. https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/RiverineWarfareFM31-75/RiverineWarfareFM31-75.html

I always get a kick out of when I tell people that I served in the US Navy and they ask me what ship was I stationed on?;  or looked at my flight jacket's aircrew wings and ask me what USAF airbase I was stationed at. We were all trained for combat as warriors, some more than others. Your MOS did not always match your mission assignment or additional skills, especially in the Navy.

I miss fly fishing on a beautiful river out in Montana, northern Idaho, or eastern Oregon. My left hand malfunction proibits my tying a fly on a line anymore or balancing on slippeery rocks in a fast stream...

Cheers,

Al

Bill Engelhardt

It's the 3rd of June.....

Al Peffley

OK Bill,

I'll bite on the photo you posted:

It's 1967, and the hit song was "Ode to Billie Joe". It was a memorable tune. Look at how muddy the water is in the photo...typical of the Deep South in river delta farming country. I attended Naval Air Boot Camp and Electronics "A" School in Memphis, TN. Shallow Water Sailor [US Coast Guard] aviators also were trained at NAS Memphis in the day. My buddy, Don, who graduated from Evergreen and also drove a '52 Chevy in '64 was trained there as a "Coastie" at the same time that I was stationed there. We saw a lot of swampy areas and muddy rivers and streams in the South. It was nothing like seeing the clearer tributaries to the mighty Columbia River that we know in the PNW.

https://www.songfacts.com/place/tallahatchie-bridge-choctaw-ridge-mississippi/ode-to-billie-joe

Bill Engelhardt

 What the future looked like in 1964

James (Jim) Mathews

Interesting photo Bill. We had one black rotary dial phone growing up in the 60's. Touch tone phones came out in 63 but I don't remember seeing one in Burien until a few years later. Also, I never saw a camera picture phone until many years later.  I guess my household was a bit behind the times. I went to work for Ma Bell in 1970 after a 3 year hitch with Uncle Sam.

Bill Engelhardt

Your residence and mine were very similar, Jim. The 1950s-era black rotary phone moved with us from Evansvale (near Hazel Valley) to the Gregory Heights neighborhood, ultimately replaced by a push-button unit in designer green. An equally substantive move toward the future occurred when our phone number changed from LOgan 1664 to CHerry 2-1664.

(Even then I didn't object to progress, but was resistant to change.) 

Al Peffley

I kept an old rotary dial phone for years for emergency use if the electric power went out. It came as a surprise to me that one day I realized that the local Bell Company was leasing me my telephone device by month. Land lines are still more secure than wireless connections, and they can handle more bandwidth at higher speeds (especially fiber optic line networks.) Exposure to high power 5G devices and relay equipment is not healthy to animals and humans. Little did we know that the real reason for the expansion of phone number digits was for the telecoms to sell phone numbers by the minute to solicitors (advertising), NGO's (donation gatherers), and research groups (polls & marketing)... "Progress" can be helpful and harmful. We must decide what is useful and what is manipulative in our lives, and how much risk we can accept from our decisions to participate in the changes we are offered.
 

Bill Engelhardt

Speaking of emerging technology.....

Gregg Wilson

The current level of CO2 is about 400 ppm. At 200 ppm, plants stop growing. At 150 ppm, plants start dying. At 100 ppm, plants are stone dead. At 2,000 ppm, plants grow fast. At 15,000 ppm, humans have medical trouble with CO2.

The current program too lower the CO2 level is far closer to starving plants than causing medical trouble with humans.

Bill Engelhardt

Here comes summer!