(Mac with out of town admirers, P&T, at Willow in February 2012. Photo The Lovely Bea.)
I have been avoiding it. Not because it is unpleasant. It has just been too raw. I feel the imperative growing, though. I made the mistake of looking at the archive this morning- I happened on one of the stories called “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” and was startled by the immediacy, as though Mac had just stepped out for a cold one.
https://www.vicsocotra.com/wordpress/2012/02/2573/
I don’t have much else on the plate this morning and two- maybe three- manuscripts to get serious about. That is where the despair thing kicks in. I have an accusatory file folder on my desktop. It is titled “Mac 50s,” and was intended as a place to put the stories about the interviews with RADM Donald “Mac” Showers, USN-Ret., that covered his career(s) after WWII.
We did a mini-version of the larger book to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Professional Association, which was about the time my energy was starting to flag on editing the Quarterly Publication. It seemed like a way to kill two birds with one stone- the alternative was to publish a “greatest hits” version of some of the better stories from more than a hundred issues of the Quarterly- a couple of us had paid personal money to digitize the archive, but we had done it on the cheap and the archive was not searchable in a way that made any sense, so it was easier to work with a smaller data set- and hence the Mac book was generated.
Keeping things restricted to the World War II years was a way to neatly bound the problem, since we were always all over the map in space and time.
You have seen some of the stories- Mac’s luncheon with Tito when he was bouncing between Naples and London, and his time at the Schoolhouse in Anacostia where he met everyone who was anyone in Naval Intelligence. Then the Naval Field Office (NFOIO) up at Fort Meade before it came back to beautiful Suitland, MD, to hide behind the mustard-colored Depression-era buildings of the Census Department and the National Archives.
We talked about all sorts of things. The massive bulk of the Main Navy Building on the National Mall, where the “On the Roof Gang” performed their magic, and where Mac ran into wartime colleague Forrest Sherman, who whisked him into the newly-created post war cadre of Air Intelligence officers.
I marveled at his description of what it was like to commute from Arlington to the outskirts of Baltimore in the days before the Beltway. The maturing nature of the Cold War. Cryppies and Spooks and operators of all stripes passed through the narrative. All the characters- and then back to the Pacific, and the conflict in SE Asia as he made Admiral and the system sucked him back to Washington.
His final years were as the Director of the budget programs at the Defense Intelligence Agency, then as Deputy Director, before the scorched-earth flag officer assignments process of Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwault brought retirement.
There were many interesting things after that in his second career, since Mac took off his uniform and reported to the nascent IC Staff to help DCI Richard Helms manage the fractious intelligence community. We agreed to not discuss anything that would still be of interest to the folks at Langley, at least not for the record, but I can tell you we are still debating some of the fruits of his labor today.
Perhaps the most poignant was the third career Mac took up: first as caregiver for his beloved wife Billie, and then as a volunteer to help others through the bewildering world of dementia and cancer.
He was my guide as my parents slipped away, and his experiences made mine the more bearable.
And then there was the sudden illness, and Mac’s decision to take his leave with his family around him. The Showers clan is something special, and I am honored to have spent so much time with them over the last few years.
And then there was the amazing spectacle of his Mac’s interment at Arlington Cemetery- damn, I am getting misty about it now. Maybe that is why I have been in denial mode about the project.
But it is time to get back to work. I wish I had been more organized when we were doing the project. And of all things, I wish he was over at The Madison so I could stop by and ask a few questions.
This will be the first of the projects I will get to. The one about Raven and Big Mama is still a little hard to deal with. Hell, one out of three wouldn’t be bad, you know?
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303