Friday, 5 November, 2004

1947 I've been trying to put together some thoughts on the recent election. But at the moment that will have to wait for another day. Right now I want to put up this picture here of the the crew of the Francis Robinson. The Francis Robison was a Buckley class destroyer escort launched in February 1944. Somewhere in this picture is my friend Rob Bratton's father. (Robert creatively populates the comments of this site regularly). He is one of the ordinary seamen in the back rows up on the ships bridge. Rob himself wasn't sure which one he was, when he e-mailed me this picture back on the 10th of last month. Both our fathers were in the U S Navy in the immediate post war years. Rob was the baby in his family. I wasn't - I got a few years on Robert. Rob's father passed away last week. Rob went back down to Roanoke VA.  where he and his wife are from for the funeral. So I'm putting this picture up. It's what I can do. The spot where this picture was taken,  I know where it is (yes, Key West, the picture says as much. )  I believe I've stood on that spot. I was stationed at NAS key West when I was with the RA-5C squadron, RVAH-7.  That's on Boca Chica key about 12 miles up the road from where this picture was taken. Prior to joining the squadron for the month or so I was taking class C school, we stayed at the Navy Annex next to the old closed down base. This picture is on that base. I used to love the look of it, it was a ghost town frozen in time in the 1950's when I was there. Somewhere I have a few pictures I took ( I was still shooting with the Bolsey then so they're not great pictures),  had to climb over a 12 ft barbed wire fence to get into the place. It was quite empty. So while I never met Mr. Bratton, I still feel a certain kinship with him. 12:55:24 AM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2004 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 12/01/04; 12:13:53.