Veterans Day

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Dad has a photo on the wall of his study of the destroyer he served on in the Navy steaming into the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina.

It’s a cherished possession.

Dad had to go to some lengths to get into the Navy.

He was in high school when the U.S. entered World War II and older classmates enlisted. Two friends, Ted Lange and Bob Vogel, were killed in the Battle of the Bulge.

My father didn’t want to spend the war sleeping on the ground, so he decided to enlist in the Navy instead of joining the army. He took the train to a recruiting office in New York City.

It was the spring of 1944, and he was applying for Officers Candidate School. He passed the physical and returned the following day for the rest of the tests, including one for vision.

The recruiter had spread papers out on the table with different colored circles. The candidate in front of my father was reading out numbers.

My father couldn’t see any numbers. He wondered: “Is this some kind of game?”

He flunked the test and learned he was color blind.

He took the test twice more, once in New York City and then in Syracuse and failed both times. Since he was still only 17, he started college and completed a semester.

The following February, he returned to another recruiting office in Newark, N.J. to take the Eddy Test, an exam designed to measure aptitude for repairing electronics. Such specialists were in high demand to repair radios and radar equipment.

Dad failed the vision test again.

The chief petty officer administering the exam needed to fill the slots, so he offered to help.

He showed my dad the charts and told him the answers. He quizzed him that day and Dad returned for several days in a row to “study” for the test.

By the end of the week, Dad said he could “answer the questions without even seeing the chart.”

It’s hard to imagine that happening today.

On April 1, 1945, Dad headed for boot camp. Germany surrendered shortly after, followed by Japan. My father never saw combat.

He spent three years in the Navy, half of the time serving on the USS Watts, a Fletcher class destroyer. The ship shuttled between Charleston, Norfolk, Guantanamo and Philadelphia.

I knew Dad served; I hadn’t appreciated what it meant in terms of community until last year when we went to a Memorial Day parade and happened to stand next to two veterans.

All three men were wearing the telltale baseball caps with their ship numbers that indicated they had spent time in the Navy. It turned out the other two served on destroyers during the Vietnam War.

My favorite part of the conversation was my father correcting them about where the radio room was located on a Destroyer.

It was amazing to hear three Tin Can Sailors who didn’t serve at the same time, much less in the same war, share memories as if they had bunked together.

They were all so young then.

They didn’t know at the time that those days would define their lives.

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

COMMUNICATIONS: Slack boomed during Covid but slowly Microsoft with all its incumbent advantages is taking over the market.

AI SALARIES: The prices AI companies are paying for talent is amazing and a reflection of the value and intensity of competition in the industry.

BEYOND MEAT: I’m not sure Beyond Meat was a ZIRP phenomenon, but it was defintely a bubble that I and many others mistook for a secular trend.

SOCIAL MEDIA: The election has re-injected energy into BlueSky.

ROCKEFELLER TREE: There is always a backstory behind the story.