In the Navy

A modern obituary writer will attempt to close the piece with a quote from the deceased, or a zinger from someone else. This adds a bit of humor to the obit, and serves to make the deceased even prophetic, they knew what was coming and met it.

If you read the end of the obit for Chuck Barris you will see this. It is but one example of the treatment at the end of the end.

Because of my family's background I always find myself paying attention to anything having to do with ships--the navy. My father was a civilian engineer for the Department of Navy, and spent a good part of his lifelong employment with them at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. As a youngster I accompanied him for ship launches, and once got to ride on the elevator on an aircraft carrier, maybe the Ticonderoga, from the hanger deck to the flight deck. The carrier was a WW II ship that was probably in the Brooklyn yard for an overhaul..

My father's older brother and my godfather was a career naval officer and an Annapolis grad who commanded destroyers in the Pacific during the war. He retired as a Rear Admiral, Flag rank, my father would always say. Name read into the Congressional Record.

As for myself, I always imagined being in the service and being in dress whites on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The service didn't want me based on something medical, and perhaps it was all for the better. While I was imagining a navy where you weren't in danger, I also didn't know about the backwater patrol boats in Vietnam that sprayed the defoliant Agent Orange on he shoreline, a chemical from Dow that was later found to cause a high rate of cancer. An admiral's son died from it. So much for dress whites.

I read most obits, usually leaving the ones about ballet out. Zero interest prevails there. No names are familiar.. So when I saw an obit by Sam Roberts for a Texas Congressman with the attention grabbing name of Kika de la Garza I took in a read.

Mr. de la Garza was a 16-term Congressman representing South Texas. His last name is Mexican, and his first name from a favorite uncle, dropping his birth name of Eligio. And who could predict that Mr. de la Garza's obit would end with something about the navy?

He was a long-time chair of the Agriculture committee who liked to tell the story of a submarine commander who asked him how long did he think he and his crew could stay underwater. I once visited the sub USS Nautilus in Groton, Connecticut. Every time I see a stack of banged up green drawer file cabinets I imagine the stacked space afforded three sailors for sleeping on that sub. An MRI machine looks like it gives you more clearance. You had to really be tired to fall asleep under those conditions.

The sub commander, seeking an answer to his question to Mr. de la Garza, gets the reply "I don't know, one year, two years, three years?"

Yikes, any one of those seems like an long time. Which one is right?

The sub commander gets Mr. de la Garza's confirmation that he is on the Agriculture Committee, and therefore knows something about food. Yes.

The sub commander replies, "We can keep this submarine under water as long as we have food for the crew."

Thus, Congressman de la Garza was shown the military importance of food. I'm sure air and water help, but you get the idea. There was no EPA when the question was asked.

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