William A. Crowell
Jan,
My sister, Connie (twin #2) just e-mailed me of the
web site here. Cool!!! It is too late for us to plan on getting to
the valley next month. But here is what
has happened in my life.
During the summer between our Junior/Senior year, my
Dad (of all people) convinced me that completing high school was not in my best
interest. Since I was one of the
younger ones of our class, not yet seventeen, that was a cool plan. One week after my 17th birthday,
I joined the U.S. Navy. During the next
four years I traveled throughout the Orient and South Pacific. In 1963 I fell in love with Charlotte
Mullings from Imperial. We were married
in September of 1964. Thirty-seven
years later we are still married and have two daughters, a son, six
grand-children, and Bandit (our Jack Russell terrier).
In 1969 we moved from Imperial, on an airplane, to
Michigan, where I attended Mid-western Baptist College. My love for the sea had kept me in the Naval
Reserve and I was recalled to active duty 1972. Leaving Charlotte, the girls, and our unborn son in Imperial, I
was shipped to South-East Asia. After
being shot at for $65 a month combat pay, I decided I wanted to shoot back on
my terms. So at the old-age of 29, I
volunteered for the Naval Undersea Combat Group. The average age in my class was 21 so I was called Pop (my
grandbabies still call me Pop). We
started with 55 eager young sailors in the class and 17 weeks later we
graduated 15. I was elated, I finally
graduated from something. The next
several years had the family pretty well in one location, but I was a shadow to
my family. I would slip into town
unannounced and disappear as quickly.
Charlotte and I sat here one evening and counted the time I was actually
at home. Out of a 23 years naval
career, I had been home less than 12.
Charlotte is a jewel of a wife and mother.
1985 saw us transferred back into the fleet. I was commissioned as a Chief Warrant
Officer (Diving and Salvage) and sent to Kings Bay, Georgia. I was in the recovery operations after the
space shuttle Challenger died in Florida.
One evening, at dinner, our oldest daughter began to put things
together. Since the family never knew where
I would be, she began asking too pointed questions. “Dad, where were you during Grenada, the hostage crisis in Iran,
Libya, etc…” For the first time in my
life, I lied to my children. At that
point is when I decided to retire.
Since the kids were settled in the southeast, we
didn’t attempt to return home. We had
learned to make home where the family is.
We settled in North Augusta, SC where I became a mechanical
engineer. In 1990, I was contracted to
do one last job in the service of our nation, where I spent 4 months in the
Caribbean. Life returned to normalcy until last year.
We are now in Indiana where I am engineering the
very things I was doing when I first left C.U.H.S. in 1961. Along the way we have gathered good children
and wonderful grandchildren. God has
blessed us with his mercy and salvation through His son. And now in our nation’s greatest crisis, I
can only plead; “God be merciful and protect us from this hoard.”
Bill
Thanks,
William A. Crowell