- HARVEY EDWARDS -

I checked onto the Dutton at the Red Hook shipyard around Christmas day 1974 as an ETN3, fresh out of A and C schools and sub school. We caught a storm when we left New York. It was my first time at sea and I was sicker than any time I had ever been before that. I submitted a request chit to the Chief asking to transfer to the Air Force; he laughed, told me I was a real card and tore up the chit - I don't think he realized I was serious. I stood Sonar, NIC, and SCC watches. I was also the sonar watch supervisor and sat on the qual panel. I usually preferred the mid-watch if I could get it so I could get my quota of sunbathing in. (Maybe someday there will be a need to tell some Dutton "superhero" stories (Bell Pepper Man, Baby Huey, and another whose name escapes me at the moment). I left the Dutton in November 1976 as an ETN2 - destination Nat Greene in New London. I made a couple of patrols and was transferred to the Bowditch in 1978. I stood mostly SCC watches, launched rockets off the fantail, and played DJ on WRAT radio. (The new CO charged into NIC wanting to know who this "Hector Radcliffe" was and what the hell he was doing in the NIC.) I left the Bowditch in May 1979, still an ETN2, to separate from the Navy. Separation was in Norfolk. I checked in around 2am. The OOD didn't like my haircut and woke up a barber to give me a "regulation" haircut. My observation is that a regulation haircut at 2am looks more like a 2am haircut than a regulation cut. Four days as a chaser, including the weekend, and I was gone. Barry Pulliam was separating also. He checked into Norfolk the following morning and didn't suffer a regulation haircut. I moved to Louisiana and married Debbie Liggio. She was the Maggie on Bowditch (1978 & 1979) and Hess (as Edwards in 1980). I earned a BS at the University of New Orleans and then went to work as a geophysicist at NAVOCEANO. (What you do as a sailor can come back to haunt you when the sea stories start.) I went back to the Dutton as the Gravity Rep in 1984. I left NAVOCEANO in 1990.

 

DUTTON PHOTO ALBUMS, 1975-1976
- Click a thumbnail to open the photo album, then one of the album thumnails to start the slide show.  Click a slide to open the photo at a higher resolution.
	Life aboard USNS Dutton, 1975-1976.
	USNS Dutton crosses the equator on Jun 2, 1976. The Shellback Initiation ceremony is (semi) mandatory (or you wait it out in the Royal Jail and do not get a certificate).
	Broomball.

MISCELLANEOUS PHOTOS
	Hal Lindsey (Buckwheat) and Jim Thompson, taken in New London, CT, in 1977 after we had all left the Dirty D and gone to the boats. (Click to enlarge.)