Thomas N. Latimer  CTR2  Nov 1966 - May 1969


I graduated from high school in June of 1966, when the draft was ramping
up.  Turning 18 in August put me in their sights.  My father was a USNR
medical officer in WWII and Korea and suggested we go down to Brodhead
Naval Armory in
Detroit and see what they had to offer.  Needless to say it sounded like
a pretty good deal, so I showed up the next week and took the written
test.  At the conclusion the PN1 read off three names...mine was THIRD
(I just made the list !).  As we were leaving the
testing room a guy sitting in the back asked the PN1 about the rest of
the names...he replied "YOU'RE ALL ARMY MEAT".  Wow.

Anyway I was assigned to surface division 9-56 for a few months, and
during that time I was told to report to LCDR Walters.  Finding the
office was tough...it was way back on the second deck in the armory,
with a big metal door.  So I knocked,
he answered, and invited me in.   He asked me if I had picked out a
school yet, and I said I was heading in the direction of Engineman
(worked on a lot of cars in my teens).  He shook his head and said he
had a MUCH BETTER DEAL.  He noted
I had done some shortwave listening and did well on the Morse test, so
he offered me 'a school' in Pensacola, Florida, for six months, having
to do with Morse code and shortwave 'stuff'.  After that, he said, I'd
be going to the far east for duty. He stressed that
it would be doing a lot of the same stuff I liked to do in civilian life
(except no one ever put a wastebasket over my head and beat on it with a
pointer in civilian life...hahahaha).  I asked for more details but he
said that was all he could tell me.

So, I said thanks, I'd think about it, and got up to leave.  "No, he
said, I need a decision RIGHT NOW". I gulped, sat back down, and after
15 seconds decided it couldn't be worse than Engineman school. (Little
did I know !) . So I accepted
his offer, joined SecGruDiv 9-6, and the rest is history.

In retrospect I am grateful for the things I was exposed to during that
time, especially the discipline and respect.  I am glad to see the board
now has over 25,000 members, and saddened that we have almost 12,000
CT's who have passed on.

Tom Latimer  CT(R)2
USNR
Naval Communications Training Center Pensacola 1967-1968
Naval Communications Station Philippines  1968-1969