Tom Martin Chapter 4

 Later Life

   With the beginning of the new century Tom was left with 2 young children and no wife. Of course he had abandoned his first wife and 7 children, and she had remarried in 1893. She (Anne Marie) had married Joe Anderson who was a good stepfather for her children and they had produced a daughter, Eula. So Tom’s need for a wife may have instigated a mystery which may never be solved. But first the local newspaper, the Chelan Leader, ran a front page feature in the Thursday July 4 1901 issue. The article praised him for his service in the War of the Rebellion and for his enviable record as a loyal citizen. The reporter’s summary of his war record was almost entirely correct, but his knowledge of elementary arithmetic led him to conclude that Tom must have joined the Union army at the age of 14. Thus another consequence of Tom’s variable birth date.

   Now to the mystery. There is a document in the Washington State Marriage Records 1854 - 2013; Whitman County marriages 1902 Jan - Apr. The document is numbered 1389 and includes:

   Mary E. Robertson (nee Zimmerman), a widow, b. Ohio, age 49

   Married Apr 18, 1902 to

   Thomas J. Martin, b. Illinois, age 55, residence Chelan, a farmer

   Father Joel, Mother Elizabeth

   Married in Colfax, Whitman County, WA

   Marriage performed by Judge Chadwick

   Witnesses O.L. Kennedy and Harry M. Love

It seems virtually impossible that there could be another Thomas J. Martin, living in the same place, born of the same parents, etc. And yet I have found no evidence that Tom and Mary ever lived together, or that Mary ever took the Martin name. Mary and Mr Robertson had moved from Ohio first to Nebraska and then later to Palouse. They had 6 children and apparently farmed right on the Washington/Idaho line. Mr Robertson died in 1895 and is buried in Viola, ID, and later Mary moved to Clarkston, WA. She died in 1925 and is buried there.

Is it possible that Tom and Mary, both widowed and with young children, married in desperate need of a partner but very soon realized their union would not work?

   Tom returned to Chelan and in Sept 1902 he applied for a pension increase from $6.00 to $12.00 per month. He was ordered to report to a doctor in Wenatchee before a certain date in 1903, and he failed to report in time. His application was rejected. Sometime in 1903 and early 1904 Tom moved to Burnt Ranch in Trinity County, California. He applied again and was ordered to a doctor in Hoopa, who in October 1905 gave him a thorough exam . Tom’s measurements were: 5’8”, 150 lbs, blue eyes, light hair, fair complexion. He had a corneal ulcer of the right eye and very minor symptoms of rheumatism. His application was again rejected. He continued several times to apply again, until 1907. He was now living in Chinaflat, Humboldt county, CA. At the age of 62 he would qualify for a pension increase even without a physical exam, and he very probably turned 62 in 1906. However his “variable” birth date gummed up the works again. Finally, all parties involved agreed to accept Oct 23, 1844 as the date of his birth, and as of June 1908 he began to receive $12.00 per month.

   When Tom moved to Northern California in 1903 or 1904, he left baby Zola with her grandparents. He probably also left Willy too, but sometime before 1910 he

brought Willy to California with him. In 1910 Tom was the cook in a boarding house in Yreka, and Willy was living in a nearby neighbor’s house. He was 15 and was probably working as a farm hand. Tom had 9 children and he never acknowledged the oldest 7 after he left them in 1886. He probably never saw Zola after 1903 or 1904, and Willy after 1914. The rest of the Martin clan did not know that Willy and Zola existed until fairly recently. As it turned out, Willy joined the U. S. Army in 1914 as a Private and fought in WWI. He spent the rest of his life in the Klamath Falls area, married and lived to 101, dying in 1996. Zola stayed in the Central Washington area all her life, married and died in 1976.

   Tom stayed in Northern California, and in 1912 he was in Yreka, Siskiyou County. His pension was increased to $16.00 per month, and Tom’s brother Levi wrote to the Bureau of Pensions asking for Tom’s address. Levi had been farming in Prescott, Arkansas for at least 20 years and had not heard from Tom for several years. I don’t know if Tom and Levi got back in touch.

   Finally in 1914 Tom won the prize - he was admitted to the Soldier’s Home, at Sawtelle, Los Angeles County, as of Nov 4, 1914. The Soldier’s Homes were established by the federal government in several places around the country, starting in 1887. They were intended for veterans who were disabled and/or elderly and did not have the means to support themselves. I would have assumed that he would move into the Soldier’s Home promptly, but he remained in Yreka for more than another year. His reaching 70 (based on his birth date of Oct 23 1844) made him eligible to live in the Soldier’s Home and also a boost in his pension. However, what I can determine from his correspondence with the Bureau of Pensions is that there was a new commissioner at the Bureau who was not accepting the Oct 23 1844 birth date. Here is an example of some of the correspondence:

      DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

BUREAU OF PENSIONS

Washington

      Mr Thomas J. Martin

      Yreka, California

 Sir:

         Your claim for increase of pension under the Act of May 11, 1912 requires        

      your explanation, under oath, of the discrepancy in your statements, giving    

      October 3 and October 23, 1844, October 23, 1845 and November 3, 1843

      as the date of your birth, and you should state the correct date, without oath,

      the name of the town or township, county and state in which you resided 

      during the summers of 1850 and 1860; with whom you then lived; the full 

      names of your parents, brothers and sisters living in June 1850 and June

      1860, and, if you lived in a city, you should state your street and between     

      what streets.

                                                         Very respectfully,

                                                             E. C. Tiemann

                                                         Acting Commissioner

Here is a bit from Tom’s hand-written letter (including mistakes) to the Bureau of Pensions:

…it was nessary for me to furnish a Recrd of my Birth in reply Will say it is imposabel for me to do so as thair Was no record only our family record and I have not saw it since 1868 When I left my home my father was ded When I left and my mother did in 1872 and the home was burnt up and I lost trace of the record and have no means of finding it… 

 Finally, in 1916 Tom moved into the Soldier’s Home, Sawtelle, Los Angeles, California and his pension increased to $24 per month. Other occurrences in 1916 were that Levi wrote again to the Bureau of Pensions asking for Tom’s address, and also on March 27 1916, in the Soldier’s Home Chapel, Tom married Barbara C. Palmer, a resident of Sawtelle, white, 63 years old, widowed, and 2 prior marriages. Her late husband was a veteran and evidently she had remained at or near the Soldier’s Home (her first husband, deceased, was not a veteran).

   Tom and Barbara must have lived together, but only Tom’s name was on the list of “inmates” which the old soldiers were called on census documents. Tom and presumably Barbara left Sawtelle and he officially transferred to the Soldier’s Home in Johnson City, TN on March 18, 1920. This was evidently meant to be a short stay on the way to Florida, as Tom was officially discharged from Johnson City on Sep 15, 1920.

   Tom and Barbara arrived in St Cloud, FL shortly after leaving Johnson City, and they took up residence on Columbia Ave at 12th St. St Cloud was different from the Soldier’s Homes as it was not run by the federal government; it was essentially a small town that had been built especially for veterans. It was a precursor to retirement “towns” such as Leisure World, and was probably more comfortable for couples than the Soldier’s Homes. Depending on which birth date is chosen, Tom was 75 or 76 and his health was failing.

   In 1923 Tom applied for the maximum amount for his pension because of the extent of his disability. The examining doctor’s comments were: “The claimant is an invalid, suffering tuberculosis of glands which develop in old abscesses. The abscesses suppurate profusely and do not heal. The claimant requires help all the time being totally disabled and not able to dress, undress, or care for himself at any time in any capacity.”

   The pension increase was approved and his pension of $72 per month commenced Nov 1, 1923.

   On June 3, 1924 Thomas Jefferson Martin died. He was buried in Mount Peace Cemetery, St Cloud, Florida.

Tom Martin Chapter 3

 Peace?

   The war was over and the three Martin brothers all survived. Sam, the oldest, had moved to Texas before the war and had been drafted into the Confederate army. He had been assigned as a POW guard in the prison camp at Tyler, Texas. Levi, two years older than Tom, had enlisted in the Union army in 1862 at the age of 19. He had been captured and sent to the POW camp where Sam was a guard; he spent the rest of the war in the prison camp as relatively comfortable as possible. Tom the youngest enlisted in 1864 at 19; he was captured, then escaped, and then fought in two of the bloodiest battles of the war. When he returned home to Coles County, Illinois in 1865 he was surely not the same teenager who had gone to war a year and a half ago.

   In 1866 Tom’s father died, and it is likely that Tom left his sisters to take care of their mother. In any case by 1868 Tom had joined his brother Sam in Lancaster, near Dallas. In the 1870 census Sam is married and has two sons 3 and 1, and Tom is living with Sam’s family as a farm hand.

   In 1871 Tom’s world changed again. On 19 October 1871 Thomas Jefferson Martin married his second cousin Anne Marie Atterberry. He was 26 and she was 18. For the next 14 years he raised cattle, first in Lancaster near his brother Sam, and later in Hood County, Texas. Tom and Anne had 7 children. My grandfather Stephen Albert Martin, their second child, was born in 1874 and Estes Martin was the youngest, born in 1885. In the 1880 census they were still in Lancaster, and Tom made the first mention of debilitating rheumatism in the Federal Census form where column 15 asks the question if the individual is sick or disabled. Also in another venue he complained that he believed he “caught” rheumatism when herding cattle in 1875.

    Once again Tom’s world changed, but this time his wife and children bore the brunt. In about 1886 Tom disappeared. I have found no evidence that he ever again contacted his family in Texas. However he did occasionally write to his sister Polly and his nephew Ivory Martin. The period from about 1886 to 1889 is void of documents; the comments I found in his later pension requests and his contacts with his nephew, in some he said he had been in Canada and in others he said Mexico, Idaho, and Washington. In fact, he may have been “riding the rails” and it is possible that he had visited all of them. In any case the 1890 register of Union Soldier and Sailor Veterans has Tom in Chelan, Okanogan County, WA enumeration district 23. Chelan was opened for homesteading in

1886, and Tom had become a homesteader possibly as early as 1888 and certainly by 1890.

   In the early 1890s Tom apparently formed a loose partnership with another homesteader (David Henry Correll) for raising work horses. There was a boom in wheat growing and there was a need for draft horses, up to 20 horse teams. Tom seems to have done well. His partner was a colorful character - a cowboy, a lawman, a gunslinger, a gambler and perhaps an outlaw. Tom was the opposite - a solid citizen, a member of Harrison Post 104 of the Grand Army of the Republic, and an Odd Fellow and a Mason both in Lipan, Hood County, Texas and in Chelan. And once again, in 1895 Tom’s world changed.

   The farmer next to Tom was Turner H. Culbertson, who had a daughter Maggie Minnie Culbertson. Tom and Maggie were married on Feb 27, 1895. On the marriage license Maggie’s age was 16 and Tom’s was 39. It is likely that Tom did not know his birth date exactly, but claiming to be 39 was blatant. He was most likely 50. It is practically certain that he was born in 1844 plus or minus a year, and when he was required to give his birth date he seemed to pick a random date from the air. For the rest of his life his variable birth date haunted him.

   The next five years, until 1900, were probably the best in his life. His rheumatism and problems with his eyes continued to bother him, but he was happy with his new wife and was a well liked and respected citizen. Tom and Maggie had 2 children, William (Willy) Chesley Martin b. Apr 12 1895 and Zola Selena Martin b. Dec 12 1899. It seems that Tom and his father-in-law Turner were good friends, and Tom was about 10 years older than his father-in-law. It did not seem to bother Turner that Willy was born 6 weeks after Tom and Maggie were married. But then tragedy came in 1900. Zola’s birth must have been very hard and Maggie died on March 18, 1900; Zola was 3 months old and Maggie was just 21.

   Tom and the 2 children moved in with the grandparents, Turner and Selena Culbertson. Tom was receiving a veteran’s pension of $6.00 per month to help with the household expenses and if he had a qualifying disability he could get $12.00 per month. But the application for the greater amount required physical exams, reports from physicians, letters of support from neighbors, and a precise date of birth. This was the beginning of a large amount of correspondence with the Bureau of Pensions which provides a great deal of information about Tom’s location and welfare. 

Tom Martin Chapter 2

 WAR

   In 1861 the seceding states formed the Confederacy and the fighting began when Confederate troops fired on the Union’s Fort Sumter, in South Carolina. The Martins and close relatives were on both sides, but most were Unionists. In Joel Feagley Martin’s family all were Unionists, however the oldest surviving son Sam Martin who had been living in Texas for several years was drafted into the Confederate army. In April of 1862 the event which brought the horrors of war to the Martins became known as “The Great Hangings at Gainesville”. Gainesville was a small city which was the county seat of Cooke County, Texas. Throughout Texas county-wide voting had been held on the question of seceding from the Union, and only a handful of counties voted in favor of staying in the Union. Cooke County voted to stay; the majority of the voters were small farmers who were not slave holders and saw no reason to secede. Texas did secede and then the Confederacy passed a law that all able-bodied men between 18 - 35 must join the Confederate Army except that men with 10 or more slaves were exempted. The small farmers in Cooke County saw this as clearly unfair and many of them signed a petition to eliminate the exemption to the Confederate congress (then in Montgomery, Alabama). A couple (at least) of wealthy slaveholders took advantage by claiming that the signers of the petition were dangerous supporters of the Union. With their wealth they controlled the sheriff and the judges; they hired gunslingers to round up the small farmers and brought them before a kangaroo court. They were all found guilty, and all 41 were hanged.Three of the lynched men were Martins or close relatives. In particular Richard N. Martin was a first cousin to Thomas Jefferson Martin. It was clear to Tom Martin and his brothers that their duty was to serve. 

   Sam had been forced to serve in the rebel army and the next older brother Reason was crippled and unable to serve. Then in order of age was Levi who was 19 in 1862; he enlisted in Co. G, 130th Illinois Infantry. He was captured and spent the last year of the war in the POW Camp (Camp Ford) at Tyler, Texas where his brother Sam was a guard. Camp Ford was relatively well run, and Levi was happy enough to sit out the rest of the war.

   In February of 1864 Tom Martin and his cousin Daniel Parker Martin, both 19, enlisted in Co. A, 7th Illinois Infantry. The 7th Illinois was probably the best armed regiment in the Union army; they were armed with Henry lever action repeating rifles. These rifles could hold 16 rounds in the magazine and could fire much faster than the standard single shot rifles that were used by most soldiers on both sides. The soldiers of the 7th Illinois bought their own Henry rifles for $50. A Private’s pay was $13 per month, so they would pay about $4 a month for a year.

   Tom and Dan Martin were 2 of 200 recruits assembled on Feb 18 at Camp Butler Illinois, about 90 miles from Mattoon. They left for Pulaski, Tennessee and arrived at Feb 27, and shortly left for another 90 miles to Florence, Alabama. Company A. was based at Florence and their assignment was to patrol the Tennessee River to prevent the confederates from using the river for transport. There was almost no time for training the new recruits, so they must have been training “on the job”.

   All evidently went well through March and April, but on May 7, 1864 a confederate brigade crossed the river and attacked the union forces at Florence. The rebels greatly outnumbered the union soldiers and after six hours of fierce fighting the union forces retreated. The after-action report said “...a loss of three officers and 32 men wounded and captured.” It is not clear if some were wounded and others captured or if all 32 men were captured, but in any case Tom Martin was one of the captured men. As it turned out, on May 13 the union forces counter-attacked and drove the rebels back across the river and took many rebels captive. Meanwhile Tom Martin and the other Union captives were being taken to the confederate POW camp at Columbia, South Carolina. It’s not clear just where Tom escaped, but he said he escaped after 7 days of marching, and then 15 days of traveling at night, hiding during the day and being helped and fed by escaped slaves until he reached union gunboats on a bend at the Tennessee River at Clifton, Tennessee. After about six weeks in all Tom rejoined the 7th Illinois at Rome, Georgia. It is not clear whether he immediately returned to Company A or was temporarily assigned to Company B, but in any case the 7th Illinois was patrolling the railroad until early July, and then they moved to the south side of the Etowah River northwest of Atlanta until October 3. It appears that they had a few weeks of relative quiet. When Tom was captured it is almost certain that his captors took his Henry rifle, and I suppose he must have acquired another when he rejoined his company. His medical record has only one entry; he was on the sick list from Sept 28 until Oct 2 when he was returned to duty. The diagnosis was intermittent fever, which was a common diagnosis and could have been the result of any number of infections. In any case he was back on duty just in time for a nasty fight. 

   On October 3 the 7th Illinois and three other regiments were ordered to Allatoona, an important rail junction about 30 miles north of Atlanta. General Sherman needed to control Allatoona to move through Atlanta to continue his march to the sea, and the confederate General Hood needed to stop Sherman. On the morning of October 5 the battle commenced, with over 5000 troops in all. The Confederates had an advantage in numbers (roughly 3000 to 2000) but the 7th Illinois with their Henry rifles had the advantage in firepower, and at the end of the day the Confederates were forced to retreat. Overall there were about 1600 casualties in all. General Sherman wrote: “For the numbers engaged, they stood upon the bloodiest battlefield ever known upon the American continent”. The march to the sea continued.

   Sherman’s union forces were stronger than any the confederacy could muster, except for one last stand at Bentonville, North Carolina. The confederate forces under General Johnston numbered about 20,000 men while Sherman had more than twice as many. The fighting lasted three days, March 19-21, and at the end Sherman’s march was hardly slowed. This was the last major battle of the Civil War and the war essentially ended on April 5, 1865 as Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Tom Martin was discharged on July 9, 1865. There is no doubt that Tom was not the 19 year old boy who had enlisted just 18 months before.

Tom Martin Chapter 1

 Before the War

   During the period starting towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the Civil War, the Martin “clan” was expanding westward through Kentucky into Illinois, and an advance guard was moving into Texas. Descendants of James Scott Martin and Jenny Feagley were established in south-eastern Illinois and were and still are a vociferous lot. A grandson of Joel Feagley Martin, Ivory John Martin (1859-1943) wrote a family story which was later amended by his son Robert Walter Martin (1895-1970), and then grandson Robert Eden Martin compiled and published the “Fragments of Martin Family History” in 1990. Meanwhile Louise Y. Neely compiled and published a book “Neely and Martin Descendants” in 1982, which included the Neely family which was intertwined with the Martins in every generation beginning in the 18th century. There is a wealth of information about many of these families during the 19th century.

   Joel Feagley Martin (1806-1866) was the second son of James Scott Martin and Jenny Feagley. At about the age of 10 Joel suffered from “white swelling” of the knee, which could have been due to a number of causes. In any case he had a permanent stiffness in the knee and walked with a limp and crutches or a cane for the rest of his life. Nevertheless he was otherwise strong and healthy. He had very little formal education but he read voraciously what books he could find, and in his library (the Bible was ubiquitous) were Bible commentaries, the works of Seneca, a history of Greece, etc. He was a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, and the idea of teaching oneself to read by candlelight seems to have been popular.

   As a young man of about 20 he became a Baptist preacher, without ordination. He like other lay preachers went on preaching tours throughout eastern Illinois and western Indiana. On one of these tours he met Elizabeth Clemens, and they were married in about 1827.  They settled in Coles County, Illinois and raised 13 children; the oldest born about 1828 and the youngest in 1854 when Elizabeth was past 40. Joel never became wealthy, but in addition to preaching he provided for his large family by teaching school, and serving as school treasurer and justice of the peace. With his crippled leg he would not have been able to run a large farm, but he evidently kept livestock. An inventory listed 1 milk cow, 2 calves, 12 sheep and several pigs. Chickens were not mentioned but they certainly must have raised chickens as well.

  In all respects Joel was considered a pillar of the community, and his children were well cared for. Thomas Jefferson Martin was the youngest son (he had four younger sisters), and he was listed on the 1860 census as 15. It is almost certain that he was born no earlier than 1844 and no later than 1846; his actual date of birth has never been determined exactly and that has been the source of many problems later in his life. There are three of his siblings who are most important in his life: Samuel b. 1830; Levi b. 1843; and Polly b. 1847.

   By 1860 the nation was on the brink of civil war. Sam was in Texas having gone with several Martin cousins looking for land. Some of the cousins (probably including Sam) were settling or planning to settle in the area south of Dallas, while others had settled in Cooke County, which is north of Dallas and borders on the Indian Nation, which is now Oklahoma.

   In 1862 the war came to the Martin family.

   

Thomas Jefferson Martin; A Life (Part 1)

 Introduction

   I have been interested in family history as long as I can remember. I was more fortunate than most in that I was close to all of my grandparents, all of my aunts, and many of my cousins. I recall being doted on and getting away with mischief. “Close” was also physical in most cases; all four grandparents and most aunts lived within a two or three hour drive at most. I had no “blood” uncles - only the husbands of my aunts. My father was the oldest (and only) son with four younger sisters, and my mother was the youngest of five girls.

   My mother’s father Stephen Albert Martin was the first of my grandparents to die. I remember clearly when my mother received the phone call that her father had died of a heart attack; I was five years old. I recall sitting on his lap and allowing me to search through his coat pockets for a nickel, which I would be allowed to keep. Even today my impression of him is gentle and loving. However he lived on the edge of poverty and barely supported his family with low paying jobs as different as picking cotton and making costume jewelry.

   What kind of childhood had molded my grandfather? What kind of father had been my great-grandfather Thomas Jefferson Martin? About twenty years ago I knew only from family stories that Tom Martin had disappeared from his home in Texas in about 1886, and was never again heard from. One of the few facts I knew concerning him was that he had fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union. It took only a little amateur sleuthing to discover that the National Archives had a file of correspondence concerning his soldier’s pension; for the cost of $37.00 I received a stack of papers almost an inch thick with copies of applications, rejections, corrections, etc, from 1896 - 1924. With this information I wrote a short biographical sketch of Tom Martin which I shared with my family.

   About five years ago my brother Bruce Martin Bradberry produced a wonderfully written family history book concentrating on our parents (Winsel and Eleanor Bradberry: The story of the Bradberry-Winn and Anderson-Martin families). Bruce was able to augment the sketch I had written and place it in the proper context. And now, with the relative ease of accessing more and more historical documents on the internet I have been able to flesh out the story of Tom Martin. But be aware that for every mystery solved there appears to be yet another!

Mister Rogers' (and Snoopy's) Neighborhood

 In 1968-1971 I was assigned to the USS ROGERS (DD876) as Operations Officer and Senior Watch Officer. Our home port was San Diego, and we were seldom at home. We made 2 deployments to Viet Nam during the height of the war, and when we were back at San Diego we were usually at sea training for more war. Our youngest daughter Kassi was born in 1970 and her birth was very hard on Donna. Shortly after Kassi’s birth I was at sea again, heading for the Tonkin Gulf and leaving Donna with our 3 girls. Keri, our oldest, could have been a help with Kassi except that she had a broken arm from a playground accident. 

This must have been the hardest part of our marriage.The ROGERS was a WWII destroyer, named for the three Rogers brothers who were killed in action on the USS NEW ORLEANS at the battle of Tassafaronga north of Guadalcanal in 1942. ROGERS was commissioned in 1945 and in the early 1960s was upgraded with more modern electronics and support for helicopter operations. Along with 5 inch guns, 40mm anti-aircraft guns, and torpedoes she was equipped with DASH, which meant Drone Antisubmarine Helicopter. The DASH helicopter was flown just like the toy drones that are around today; it was strictly line-of-sight, so the sailor at the controls was on a platform on the mast. The idea was for the helicopter to drop a torpedo close to a submarine who was several miles away. It seemed like a good idea but our sonars weren’t good enough to find submarines at any great distance, so the DASH mission fizzled out.So a new mission in Viet Nam was found for DASH. We gave our helicopter the name Snoopy, and equipped it with TV infra-red detectors. The idea was to fly Snoopy over land to find the enemy, usually by detecting fires or heavy equipment operating. Several destroyers had Snoopys but I don’t think any of them had much success. The ROGERS had the last operational Snoopy. The very last mission we flew was at night and when Snoopy landed on board we found a bullet hole in one rotor blade. We gave Snoopy a purple heart and left her in Pearl Harbor on her way home.

Young men at war develop a sense of humor which would not seem funny to civilians, but which helps sailors and soldiers to keep their sanity. War is crazy, nasty, and boring, so a dark sense of humor is a defense.We had two ways to play on the Rogers’ name. Although it was entirely against all rules, we had a black flag with a skull and crossed bones which we flew whenever we had a chance. Of course this is the Jolly Rogers which has been flown by pirates from BlueBeard to the PIrates of the Caribbean. The other misuse of Mister Rogers’ name was when we were firing our 5 inch/38 caliber guns. These guns were small compared to those on a battleship, but each projectile weighed about 55 pounds and could hit a target more than 10 miles away. We often provided firepower for troops ashore. We typically stayed about 3 miles from shore and then could hit targets up to about 7 miles inland. We almost never saw what we shot at, and depended on the spotters ashore. Our communications technicians would play on all ROGERS’ loudspeakers “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…won’t you be my target?” BOOM! I hope the real Mister Rogers never knew what we did to his theme song.

   In January 1969 ROGERS was all over the news, and that’s another story.

P.S. All caps ROGERS refers to the ship; Rogers refers to the Rogers boys or to Mr Rogers. [11 Feb 2023]

Shore Duty in Moscow

  In 1964 I considered myself to be an old salt. For the past seven years I had been assigned to various destroyers first as a weekend warrior and deck seaman and later as a full time junior officer. I expected to be transferred soon to a shore billet where I would have a desk and a couple of assistants so I could sit around, drink coffee and make important decisions. When my orders arrived I was on a destroyer bouncing around in the north Pacific where high frequency radio was spotty and the fleet broadcast was received by teletype. Routine messages were repeated about every six hours and it sometimes could take 24 hours to get the entire message. 

   The first few legible words of my orders were: “LTJG Bradberry, when relieved of duties and detached report to … Moscow….”. For the rest of the day I was thinking that I was going to be assigned to the ambassador’s embassy staff. But late in the evening the rest of the message arrived. I was going first to a training course of several weeks at Marquette University in Milwaukee and from there to the University of Idaho as Assistant Professor of Naval Science, where I was to teach Naval History and Gunnery at the NROTC Unit.

   The training course at Marquette was a good deal - Donna was born in northeast Indiana and she had a lot of family there, in particular her oldest sister. She stayed with her sister and family while I was in Milwaukee. It was about a four hour drive to the farm so I could spend weekends with Donna and her relatives.

   The training course was easy and the most memorable part was our living situation. There were about 20 or so young officers in the class and we were given rooms in the Nun’s dormitory. We were assigned one floor exclusively which I believe was the top floor of the 3 or 4 story building. The dining hall was on the first floor, and we spent a good deal of time in the elevator, often with nuns. The nuns were very hospitable and after a while we were all friends, but I have never forgotten that some of the nuns had vocabularies that would make salty old sailors blush.

 After the training course we headed for Moscow, with our two year old daughter Keri and our dog Snoopy, and Donna was pregnant with our next daughter. As a LTJG my pay was roughly $400/month. We expected to be in Moscow for at least two years and perhaps three, so we bought a house for $12,000. It was, and still is, a well built concrete block house at 608 W. C St. When we left after three years we sold it immediately for a few hundred dollar profit.

   I could walk to and from the Navy Building on the UI campus (if the weather was good) and I had no watches to stand. When Donna and I were married she was about a year short of graduation from Pepperdine, so she took enough courses to graduate from UI, while I took graduate courses to receive an M.S. in math. This was a terrific deal since faculty members and their spouses could take any courses without any cost. We fell in love with Moscow and the UI and years later when I retired from the Navy we came back to Moscow.

   Our three years in Moscow on the UI faculty was as good as shore duty could be. We kept busy with two little daughters and both teaching and learning. There are a few details which I remember that stand out. 

   The UI president at the time was Donald Theophilus. He held a meeting for new faculty members where he informed us that Idaho had three capitols: Spokane, Boise and Salt Lake City, and north, central and south Idaho had distinctive cultures. This lecture has stayed with me for years.

   In these days chaperones for college parties are a thing of the past. But sixty years ago Donna and I were popular chaperones, probably because we couldn’t stand the loud music to the extent that we generally stayed in the next room. Who knows went on when we were out of sight? Also I was a Scoutmaster for the Elks club Explorer Scouts and one evening we had a party at the Myklebust’s house for the scouts and their “dates”. The kids wanted to have a Mexican night and make tacos because they had heard of these things. Having recently come from San Diego Donna and I were the “experts” so we were game. We had to go to Spokane to get tortillas, etc. The Norwegian grandmother was curious about tortillas; after examining them she decided they were a form of lefse and were possibly edible. The party was a success and Donna and I may take credit to have introduced tacos to Moscow.

 For the first year I was “George” which is the name for the lowest ranking officer. “Let George do it” applied to every dull or unpleasant job. The first job I recall as George was the inventory and burning of a couple of large boxes of classified documents. During WW2 the Navy operated a training program for radio operators on the UI campus, and the boxes were full of classified manuals for radio training. The manuals were twenty years outdated, and so far as I could see none of the information was any longer useful or secret. But in order to get rid of all the manuals I had to inventory each manual and burn it page by page. It took me all day to burn everything in a steel barrel. When I finished I was covered with soot and I 

probably could have regurgitated a copy of the training manual from memory.

   I recall quite a few off-campus assignments as “George” and other assignments for which the Commanding Officer wanted a more seasoned officer. The one job which we all tried to avoid was the CACO; the Casualty Assistance Calls Officer. The formal definition hasn’t changed in the last sixty years: “The CACO is the official representative of the Secretary of the Navy who provides information, resources and assistance…..in the event of a casualty….”. Normally the CACO would be a Chaplain. But we had no Chaplain. Our territory of responsibility was northern Idaho and eastern Washington and none of us had any training; all we knew is that we had a packet of information we were to deliver to the next of kin in person and to offer condolences. We were not to notify the next of kin by telephone.

   The CACO mission which I will never forget involved Starbuck. Starbuck’s was founded in 1971 in Seattle; Starbuck had nothing to do with coffee. It is a town of about 120, near the Snake River roughly 20 miles south of Washtucna. We had been informed that a Chief Petty Officer had been lost at sea a few days ago; probably due to heavy weather but no other information. He had possibly been eligible for retirement but we had no other details. His wife, or widow, was living on a farm near Starbuck. This was long before GPS and road signs were sparse, so it took me several hours to find the farm. I spruced up my uniform, picked up my briefcase and knocked on the door. A middle aged woman came to the door so I introduced myself and asked if she was Mrs —---. She said “Is this about him? I heard he got killed”. Obviously the grape vine was faster than the

official word. She didn’t seem to be upset and she went on to say that she hadn’t seen him or heard from him in over a year. I gave her the packet of forms to fill out and phone numbers to call so that she could receive all the benefits for which she was eligible. I offered to help her with the forms if she wanted, but she didn’t want any help. She thanked me for coming and I gave her my phone number and told her to call if she had any questions or problems later. I never again heard from her and it was after dark before I got home. 

   I finally realized that shore duty had a whole set of problems that were quite different from being at sea. 

Navy Justice

   An old saying is that the Captain of a ship is the judge, jury and executioner. While it is true that the Captain is the ultimate authority, there are obvious laws and regulations that he (or she) must also follow. The largest ships such as aircraft carriers have a “law officer” on board who is not a law enforcer but is something like a corporation lawyer. He or she would be a member of the Judge Advocate General Corps, called the JAG Corps, and would advise the Captain on murky elements of the law. The officers on smaller ships such as destroyers are on their own, and over the years I had a few cases of applying justice.

   There are two basic types of courts and punishment on Navy ships: the court-martial and Non-Judicial Punishment (NJP) which is known as Captain’s Mast. There are three types of courts-martial; General, Special, and Summary. I’ve never heard of a General Court-Martial on a destroyer because it requires a qualified judge (a JAG officer) and is otherwise similar to a federal court in that it  only handles the most serious crimes. A Special Court-Martial requires a qualified judge and at least three members who are similar to a jury, and they are limited in punishments similar to misdemeanor conviction in civilian court. I was a member of a Special Court-Martial once. A Summary Court-Martial consisted of one officer and could try only enlisted members, and was limited in punishments if found guilty. For example: reduction in rank (loss of one stripe), up to 30 days in the brig, etc. I served as a Summary Court-Martial once.

   Finally there is Non-Judicial Punishment (NJP), or Captain’s Mast. In the sailing days, a sailor accused of wrongdoing was made to stand before the mast while the Captain would decide whether to have him tied to the mast and flogged, or let go with a warning. In these days the Captain might let him go with a warning, or could restrict him from shore leave for several days, or 3 days in the brig on bread and water (Yes - this was still done when I was on active duty).

   My first experience with a court-martial was in about 1962 or 3 when I was a lowly Ensign on the destroyer USS PARSONS (DD 949). I’m pretty sure I was assigned to be one of the three officers on the court because no one wanted the job. The case was that two sailors were caught kissing and “engaging in homosexual activities”, and this was unspeakable. There was only one witness called; it was the night duty petty officer who had been making his rounds after taps when he found them. They had nothing to say other than to plead guilty, so we had nothing to do other than to find that they should be discharged dishonorably. Times have changed in the

last 60 years or so, and women are now serving on destroyers and being gay is not an automatic dishonorable discharge. 

   My other experience with a court-martial was a few years later when I was chosen to convene a summary court-martial. I was the senior watch officer on the USS ROGERS (DD 876) and the case was “missing movement” and unauthorized absence. The Captain wanted a summary court-martial not because of the potential punishment, since the punishment he could give was almost identical if he called the sailor to Captain’s Mast. What he wanted is the court-martial to be on the record (Captain’s Mast results would stay on the ship and wouldn’t always follow the sailor). In any case it was open and shut. The ship had been in port in Kobe, Japan for a few days and then we sailed for the Philippines.  Sailor X didn’t get back on board for about three weeks until he caught up with us. I asked him why he missed getting back to the ship and he admitted he was drunk and got to the pier too late. I asked him why he didn’t turn himself in to the shore patrol right away, and his answer was “I dunno”. In fact, he waited about two weeks before he turned himself in, and he then admitted that he had waited until he had run out of money and credit cards. So he had taken a two week vacation just because he felt like it. He was a third class petty officer, so I “busted him” back to seaman and restricted him to the ship until we returned to San Diego. The Captain approved my decision and the next superior (the squadron Commodore) approved it, so my one and only decision as a judge still holds.

   In 1976 and 77 I was on the destroyer USS POWER (DD 839) home ported in New York, first as the Executive Officer and later as Captain. I held Captain’s Mast every couple of weeks, and all were minor issues. There was one problem that I was unable to solve; we had a “pot” dealer on board, but we couldn’t identify him. The Chief Master at Arms and I had suspicions but we couldn’t prove anything. However we finally had a break. We found a big stash in a tool locker, and although we couldn’t pin it on anyone we had a great idea. We were at sea just off the coast of Long Island and it was quite windy. I had the boatswain mate pipe all hands on deck and assembled the crew on the fantail. The Chief Master at Arms took the stash and tossed it overboard a handful at a time; the crew watched the wind take each handful away. We were certain that the sailor with the tortured look was our guy although we couldn’t prove it.

   But the story continued. We were back in port in a few days and the next day our prime suspect came back to the ship in bad shape. His face and hands looked normal, but when he took off his shirt his body was black and blue all over. His problem was he had bought the pot on commission and he couldn’t pay his suppliers. They were experts in beating up guys with rubber hoses filled with BBs. He stayed on board for at least two months and we had no more pot problems.

   One final recollection about justice (or injustice). In the late 1960s I was on the destroyer ROGERS in San Diego for a few weeks of maintenance. At the same time a Turkish destroyer was in San Diego. Our squadron commander rotated from ship-to-ship in the squadron and he was on board the ROGERS for a few weeks. Since he was SOPA (senior officer present afloat) his radiomen manned our radios around the clock. We happened to hear that the Turks asked SOPA for permission to execute one of their crew members! He told them that was not possible, so they asked if they could get underway. They received permission and headed out to sea just beyond the 3 mile limit where they were in international waters. Although we were never able to completely verify the execution, we heard that one of their sailors had struck an officer, and he was immediately found guilty and hanged from a yardarm. It makes one thankful for U S Navy Justice.

Burial at Sea

   In the days of sail, a dead sailor was wrapped in sail cloth which was sewn tightly, with a lead cannonball at his feet. In a merchant ship without cannonballs, some heavy iron or steel such as a heavy chain link would be used to ensure that he would sink quickly when he was lowered over the side. In more modern times wooden coffins were often used, and sometimes there were glitches. For instance, if large holes were not drilled into the coffin it would likely float, and then drastic measures were taken such as shooting holes into the coffin until it sank.

   In 1977 I was first the Executive Officer and then the Commanding Officer of the destroyer USS POWER (DD839). We were homeported in New York at Fort Schuyler, in the North Bronx. When we headed for sea we had two choices, either down the East River past Rikers Island, the UN Building and the Statue of Liberty or we could head northeast through Long Island Sound past Block Island and be in open water. Either way it would take us two hours or more to go out to open sea past the 3 mile limit. There were only four destroyers homeported in New York, and there were many old Navy men in the area who wanted to be buried at sea when their time came. We conducted burials at sea when we were outward bound, as soon as we reached international waters (it was not allowed for burial to be too close to shore). We had a short but dignified ceremony and then commended the remains to the deep. I recall only one burial with a wooden coffin, and it went well. The others were simpler in that the deceased had been cremated, and it was easier to lower the urn of ashes into the sea. There was one burial which thankfully went well, but for which the preliminaries I remember vividly.

      Donna and I and our three daughters were living at Mitchell Field, in the middle of Long Island next to Garden City. We had very nice quarters, which had been Colonel’s quarters when Mitchell Field had

been an active air base. When my ship was in port I could commute on the Long Island Expressway along with a jillion other commuters. I bought an MG Midget to commute in. It was about 10 years old and had a rough life, and an especially marginal wiring system (which I did not realize soon enough).

   One Friday I received a phone call from the Brooklyn Naval Hospital; an old Chief Petty Officer had died and been cremated, and had requested to be buried at sea. My ship was scheduled to go to sea the next day for a few days of exercises, so we arranged that I would stop by the hospital on my way home to pick up the urn and take it to the ship the next morning. All went well, even the paperwork, until….

   In the late afternoon I was driving through Queens on my way home with the Chief’s ashes when my car completely stalled. It was getting dark so I luckily coasted off the road. All I could determine was that the battery was completely dead. The common conception was that any car left by the side of the road overnight would be stolen or completely stripped, and I needed to call Donna for help. This was before cell phones and I was in a quiet neighborhood in  Queens with no phone booth in sight or any store or business still open. So I started walking towards where I thought would be downtown. After about a half mile I saw a neighborhood bar which was open, so I headed that way. It looked like the bar from the TV show Cheers and it would not be a surprise if Archie Bunker was on a bar stool. I was in uniform and everyone wanted to buy me a beer and tell me about their Uncle Joe who was in the Navy in WWII. When I told them my predicament they got me the phone from behind the bar and helped me to tell Donna who to get here from Mitchell Field. I fortunately remembered to tell Donna to bring the spare 12 volt battery from the garage. I knew it would probably take an hour for her to get here so my main job was to stay sober while not refusing the beer which was continually being offered.

 When Donna arrived everyone cheered and welcomed her and insisted that she have a beer. By now it was about 7:30 PM and I figured to leave to collect the MG by 8:00. As it turned out, our timing was right on. At about quarter to 8:00 the regular crowd were finishing the last beer and starting to leave, and the bartender told us that we would probably want to leave too. Since this was exactly what we wanted to do, I thought that was great but I obviously didn’t understand what was going on. The bartender told us that this bar was time-sharing and he introduced us to the oncoming bartender who was very friendly and dressed in an exorbitant flashy style. The new bartender told us, gaily, that as of 8:00 PM this is a gay bar. He showed us a large scrapbook of recent photos of the drag queen contests which they held weekly. All in all the atmosphere was happy and friendly but it was entirely new and foreign to us. But we had to hurry to retrieve my stalled car, so ended our experience with a straight and gay time-sharing bar.

   When we got to my car it was still intact and the Chief’s ashes were untouched. I installed the spare battery, got home for a good night’s sleep, and back to the ship in the morning. The Chief’s ashes were buried in a dignified manner. I decided not to tell my shipmates about last night’s adventure.

Annapolis

  In 1971 our family was complete with three daughters (9, 7, and 1) and we were living in San Diego. I was just finishing 3 years at sea on the USS ROGERS (DD 876) and I was due for shore duty. To my surprise I received orders to the Mathematics Department of the Naval Academy. After 14 years of service I had learned that there were (unofficially) three tiers of officers: the top tier were the Naval Academy graduates, next were those who were commissioned through NROTC, and then the rest were former enlisted sailors who had been commissioned through OCS. And I was in that bottom tier! I had enlisted in 1957 as a “weekend warrior” while I was in college and I had gone to OCS. But luck was with me since my prior shore duty had been teaching gunnery and naval history at the University of Idaho, and I took advantage of taking courses leading to an MS in Math at no cost. Since I was considered a faculty member both Donna and I did not have to pay tuition.

   So we packed up and headed east. We had quarters on the academy grounds, between the cemetery and the hospital. The married faculty members who were mostly Lieutenants and Lieutenant Commanders lived in old but well-kept houses which were clustered together, and almost all of us had young children. There was an international flavor because there were several foreign exchange officers and their families. I remember well the French, Japanese and Mexican officers in particular. The Japanese officer held an informal Japanese class for the other officers, and the Mexican officer and I studied Japanese together. I taught calculus, complex variables and probability; each class had 20 midshipmen (+ or -) and each class had an appointed leader. At the beginning of each class I would enter the classroom and the leader would call the class to attention. I would say “Seats, gentlemen” and class began.

   We had Saturday classes, but we could usually arrange classes so that we would have one weekday off. I often used the day off to exercise or ride my bike. We joined the local bike organization, the Ann Arundel Wheelers, and Donna, I, and the two older girls all had bikes and our toddler rode in a seat on my bike. The country roads around Annapolis were good riding and we would typically ride a few miles and stop at a seafood house for crabs and beer. Donna became a potter, and we bought a potter’s wheel and a kiln from the Baltimore school system and set them up in our garage. Donna did fine work until her back gave out - so she gave up potting and moved to watercolor.

 Our girls made friends with the other kids in the neighborhood, and our nine year old became a close friend to the nine year old boy next door. Now, 50 years later, they are still close. He “came out” as gay, and now lives with his husband in Texas. But at the time the biggest domestic problem was in the public schools. Maryland is a southern state in most ways, and the schools were racially segregated. The Annapolis school district took a sledgehammer approach to integration by adjusting boundaries so that all children living on the Naval Academy would be sent to one of the urban schools (which were largely black) and some of the displaced black children would be bussed to one of the suburban schools which were largely white. The rationale was that the “Navy brats” were used to changing schools frequently, so they wouldn’t be troubled. There was a grain of truth to the plan but it was obvious that the urban schools were run down physically and had suffered for years from insufficient funding and the suburban schools had flourished, and there was no apparent effort to increase funding for the urban schools. 

   Meanwhile there was turmoil at the federal level. The Vietnam war was clearly not going to be won; the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign; and the Naval Academy was preparing to admit women midshipmen! In 1972 I was elected Chairman of the Faculty Forum. This was a job that had no significant power, but could make recommendations from the faculty to the Admiral. The faculty was half active duty officers (like myself) and half civilian government employees. The first woman officer faculty member in 1972 was LCDR Georgia Clark, and almost all of our business was making recommendations about preparing for the first group of women midshipmen to be admitted in 1976.

   By 1973 I finished my year as Chairman of the Faculty Forum without any major problems and looked forward to a quiet final year teaching. I expected to go back to sea duty in another year (which I did). But the integration of the local public schools was still an issue. So I ended up as President of the local PTA for my last year in Annapolis. Of course I did not solve all the school’s problems. However I made it clear that I strongly supported both racial integration and better funding for the schools. Not everyone agreed with me but at least at the end of the year parents and teachers were talking constructively with each other. And then we moved to Norfolk, Virginia for my next sea duty.