ENS John Kerry, top, third from right, at NOB Norfolk, 1967. Official Navy photo.)   I am going to embark on a sensitive topic this morning. I know what Rex thought about Senator Kerry, and I know how the (now) Senior Senator from Massachusetts has been a burr under a lot of saddles since he […]

  “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic.” Richard Nixon, former President   In the latter part of Admiral Rex’s […]

(Navy Wedding Cake Topper- photo copyright Helyn Rose Studio 2010) . Rex had a wonderful marriage of 49 years to Derlie, formerly of Jacksonville, Florida. It only ended with her death in 1998, and they adored one another. It has occurred to me frequently in the course of this long wandering through the life and […]

Lyndon Johnson served, as well, though this is where things start to get a little strange. They always do around Lyndon. Ike and JFK were for real. LBJ had been appointed a Lieutenant Commander three days after Pearl Harbor while still a serving Texas Congressman. He worked on production and manpower problems in the mobilizing […]

  I was out doing gentleman farmer things early against the coming rain today. It was just coming light when I got the hose out, the long extension cord and the power drill to make an attack on the barn gutter that was knocked down by the weight of the compacted snow of the great […]

(Cheap Port from the 1986 Naval Intelligence Dining In. Photo by Socotra)   It would have been in 1986. I was sitting in the NMPC office on the first floor of the sixth wing of the Navy Annex. I had not yet moved over to the junior assignment desk next to the window, and I […]

(Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko)   I found a picture of the Junk Bond King Michael Milken, and compared the images of him with the bad toupee and Douglas and still bewildered. (Milken as Milken, The Junk Bond King, in the day)     On the one side we had the go-go reality of the […]

(Symbol of an Era, the Dreaded Disco Ball. Courtesy Hailey and Heather of Atlanta) Rex took off the uniform after thirty three years to join the investment banking world of Arthurs, Lestrange & Short of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a municipal finance underwriter and originator of financial instruments. He retired one month before two guys named […]

(Reflections on Black Granite)   Rex retired in 1976, at the rank of Vice Admiral. As you know, there is no permanent grade for officers above that of Rear Admiral; retirement in the grade of Vice Admiral requires concurrence by the Senate. That body remembered his service with satisfaction, and agreed.   It was a […]

  It is one of those mornings, you know the kind.   We had planned an evening-in, talking about the events of 1974 last night, the Doctor and Mac and I, and from that would have come a lucid discussion of the painful transition from the Nixon to Ford Administrations, and how Rex and the […]