Upper Echalon
My Admiral died last week. He was my Admiral the last two years I was in the Navy. I didn't see him every day. He was the DNI, our bosses boss, but he probably came through our spaces in the briefing section three or so times a week. This was at the point when I went to the Pentagon after RVAH-7 decommissioned, and Mark Emunds got a billot with the Key West Contingency Task Force. That was a unit formed to reassure those convinced that Fidel Castro was eternally swimming over the white caps towards Florida with a knife in his teeth and a copy of the communist manifesto in his back pocket. These days such Task Forces have Hugo Chavez to contend with. The reaction of most to Chavez is "meh". Has anyone seen the tv commercial, running at least in the DC area? A little girl wearing her winter coat indoors plaintively tells her mother she's cold. A narrator comes on and announces that now no one will have to be cold thanks to Venezuala and Citgo. Citgo is a national corporation of Venezuala and Chavez has arranged to donate discounted oil to a Boston based nonprofit heating fund Venezuelan-funded heating aid to expand . I guess Hugo just wants to be loved. There was an obiturary in last Thursday's Washington Post for the Admiral Sumner Shapiro, Long-Serving Director of Naval Intelligence - washingtonpost.com . "The Admiral" is generally how we referred to him; though, if we typed his name on something for any reason it was always Rear Admiral Sumner J. Shapiro (upper division). He died at age eighty of cancer. In the paper version of that story there is even a picture of him, which does not seem to be in the online version. I have a letter I got as I was leaving signed by him. The sort of thing you could show to a prospective employer. I've never had occaision to show it to anyone. I no longer remember what it says. I have it still, somewhere. I should try to find that. He was known for passing out these nice PR booklets (I still have two of these) on Capital Hill, listing all the assets of the Soviet Navy; dedicated to the proposition that the Russian were all steel and drove battleships of gold. Still, unlike some, we never called a Blinder a Backfire. I have to confess I thought he was already dead. And am surprised he was still with us until last week. That may seem a little callous, but he was retiring around the same time I got out of the Navy and he was not well then. You see boys and girls, the Admiral chain-smoked. He chain-smoked old school too - at times. Don't smoke cigarettes, cigarettes are bad.
11:50:41 PM  ;;
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