Quick note - I am not dead

I always aim to post at least one blog entry a month... the last couple of months has not been good for this. I've got completed documents in the pipeline and others in progress. I hit NARA San Bruno last month and have some new documents that should be popping online in the next couple of years (yes, my backlog is that large). Every once and a while I look over the stats for my site to see how many people are looking and what they're rolling. Interestingly, when I looked tonight, iOS was higher on the list of operating systems used by my guests than Macintosh was, indicating more people are reading by iPad or iPhone than laptops. Windows is still the monster, at 77% of the viewers, but I think it says something about where things are heading that iOS had just over 8% and Mac was just under. I also took pains from the beginning to make sure my pages worked on older machines with lower resolutions; this is a nod to veterans who aren't pushing the super-high resolutions the kids these days take for granted. I aimed for "works well in 800 x 600" and that has paid off as these tablet devices and phones have smaller resolutions. It's largely meant I haven't had to rework the entire site to handle these new additions to the internet. I got lucky.

Random Photo - Remington Rand Factory, 1944

This is the Remington Rand factory in Bridgeport Connecticut on April 13, 1944. You can see it today here - note the St. Augustine Cemetery just above it in both photos.

The site was sold to the RemGrit Corporation corporation in 1986 and is pretty run-down these days, but at the time this photo was taken, roughly 17,000 employees were working at this site. Record Group 80-G has some odd finds from time to time...

Random Photo - Puget Sound Naval Shipyard workers

I submit a lot of photos to Navsource, but there are some I find that probably few of their readers are interested in. These are a couple, but that I find interesting. So often, the focus is on the ship and her crew, and we forget that there was a dedicated group "back home" who kept these things up to date and running strong.

Below are some yard workers from 1951, upgrading CV-33 USS Kearsarge:

Re-tiling the Wardroom on USS Yorktown in 1952:

Another shot of Yorktown; this one in 1951. I don't know that OSHA would approve....

Random Picture: The day after Tarawa

The Battle of Tarawa started on November 20, 1943, sixty-nine years ago. Below is a photo I scanned in of the aftermatch; a random 80-G find. LVT "alligators" damaged and unable to make it over the seawall. The exact date wasn't listed.

It turns out that the LVT-1 in the rear is somewhat famous and still around. She was named "My Deloris" by her crew and was the first to reach Betio's shore. The LVT-2 in front of her was from a follow-on wave. After the island was secure, "My Deloris" was shipped back to the U.S. as an exhibit for War Bond drives and later restored. She is now at the WWII/Korea LVT Museum at Camp DelMar, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California.

Random Pictures - SecNav Knox arrives at Espiritu Santo, 1943

Another in my serious of random photos; these two from Record Group 80-G are of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox arriving at Espiritu Santo for a conference in a PB2Y-2 Coronado on January 20, 1943.

The Last of My Greatest Generation

Mary Jane Boughner passed away this last Election day, November 6, 2012, She was 94. She was also my grandmother, and the last surviving grandparent. She married Robert Boughner soon after the war broke out and spent it with him in Texas at Garner Field, where he taught aspects of flying using LINK trainers to Army cadets.

On the other side, my paternal grandfather flew blimps for the Navy during the war on the west coast. So it was really no surprise that I had an interest in "the war" from a young age. Both sets of grandparents kept me supplied in World War II history books, and I never really tracked who gave me what, but I suspect that it was MJB who caught on to my interest and fostered it.

She was a librarian and it's not a stretch that she would find books a suitable gift or activity. My brother and I would stay with her and my grandfather for a week here and there in the summers when we were young, and one of the first things she would do would be to take us to the library to get books to read for the week.

I think a lot of my interest in research came from seeds she planted. Upon reflection recently, it occurred to me that she was the family member I most enjoyed talking history and research with. Initially I assumed that this was because my historical research is into a time period she lived through, and that was a life-changer for her generation. But I wonder now if there is something more to it; perhaps remnants of the boy who when shown a new thing or given a new toy, would take that and then say, "see what I did with this????"

Thank you, Mary Jane Boughner, for your love and influence. I have tried to make sure that my life somehow makes the world a better place, and you were one of the examples that drove me to want to do this.

Random Pictures - Hawse Pipe Fabrication

Occasionally I come across photos that I don't know what to do with. Ship photos are easy; find a reunion group, send to Navsource, or work with a Publisher. Airplanes... well I have friends who are authors....

But let's take the following as an example; fabrication of a mock up and pattern for a hawse pipe bolster for the USS Yorktown CV-10in 1952:

I can't say that I know of any commercial potential for the photo, but it's a historically interesting photo. So, I've decided to roll out a new occasional feature: random photos. Here are two others from the series: