Front Matter — Long Shadows
Title Page

LONG SHADOWS
By Vic Socotra

Socotra House Press
Arlington, Virginia

Copyright © 2025 Vic Socotra
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2025

ISBN: [placeholder – assign at proof stage]

Socotra House Press logo to appear centered at bottom of page.
Dedication

For Rex and Jack —
and for every sailor who stood the watch,
known or missing, in the long tide of history.
Epigraph

“Never send the last message.
Leave the circuit open.
Somebody might still be listening.”
— Vice Admiral Rex E. Rectanus, USN (Ret.)

Author’s Note

This book grew from a handful of daily reflections written in the winter of 2009–2010, after the death of Vice Admiral Rex Rectanus, U.S. Navy (Retired) and the follow-on passing of his partner Jinny Martin.
What began as a memorial thread for friends became a deeper excavation — a search for the connective tissue between memory, service, and the quiet machinery of national purpose.

The pieces you will read here were first published as The Daily Socotra columns, in real time, as the story unfolded. They were not planned as a book. They became one because the pattern emerged only after the last line was written.

Where possible, the original voices and documents have been preserved — operational accounts, oral histories, and portions of Douglass Hubbard’s Special Agent Vietnam are used with permission and attribution. Factual corrections were minimal; context was added where memory had blurred.

What remains is not a biography, nor a history, but a field notebook of America’s long twilight — a meditation on duty, loyalty, and the men who lived between the silences.

— Vic Socotra
Arlington, Virginia
Spring 2025
Acknowledgments

My thanks to those who kept the circuits alive:

Vice Admiral Rex E. Rectanus, USN (Ret.), whose story began it all.

LCDR John “Jack” Graf, USN, whose absence still fills a place in every intelligence officer’s heart.

VADM Ted “Fifty-Five” Carter and shipmates of the Office of Naval Intelligence, for preserving the tradition.

Mac Showers, Bob Melka, and Tom Brooks, for their recollections and unvarnished truth.

The Daily Socotra crew — Melissa, Splash, and the team at Socotra House — who have endured every draft, edit, and late-night inspiration.

And to the readers who followed the daily posts through winter into spring — you kept this signal alive.

Table of Contents (Front-Matter Summary)

Part I – The Flag Folded
 Rex
 Missing Man
 Old School

Part II – The Wars We Fought
 Pulling the Trigger
 Fifty-Five on Forty-Eight
 Elvis at the White House
 Sea Story

Part III – Inside the Pentagon
 Numerology
 Questions
 Revolutionary Rex

Part IV – The Legacy
 The Burial Detail
 The Last Signal
 Long Shadows