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How we react to UIC, Unsolicited Incoming Calls, is mainly a function of our mood when we realize that, once again, we are a victim. More times than not, we just hang-up. If our mood is ugly, we may curse the caller and then hang up. Sometimes we get into a verbal brawl with the caller. I have found these incidents disappointing and sometimes depressing. I try to avoid them and I usually succeed.
Rarely, but it does happen, I find myself to be at the top of my game when I become caught on the receiving end of an UIC. It is those rare times that my response blows the caller away.
My best reaction to an UCI was with a woman who I guessed was a Millennium with a Southeastern Asian “sing-song” accent.
“Hello, my name is Kim. I’m alerting you so you know your computer has been infected.”
“Hi, Kim, you must be mistaken. Are you sure you called the right number?”
“Yes, of course, we have been monitoring your device and we have found an infection.”
“Kim, I don’t think so. Exactly what device are you talking about?”
“Your PC, you know, your computer.”
“No, no, no; you have the wrong person, I don’t own a computer.”
“That’s impossible, we have been monitoring your computer and it has been corrupted.?”
“Kim, please understand, I don’t have and I have never had a computer. I don’t believe in computers.
“I don’t understand, how do you communicate on the internet?”
“I use a rosary.”
“What?”
“A rosary. It’s simple, but very effective. You take it, hold it in your hands and move your hands along it to find what you are looking for.”
Thoroughly confused, Kim was resorting to grunts and groans that mirrored her defeat. So, I ended her misery by advising her: “Google the rosary. Buy one, they’re inexpensive and you will find them to be superior to PCs, but maybe not Apple”
Victorious, I hung-up.
I wish more of my encounters with UIC were that satisfying, but most of the time, anger, indifference or fatigue cause me to react like a jerk. I hate acting like a jerk!
My second UIC triumph happened just this summer. This UIC came on my cell phone while I was driving to my local drug store here in Port Washington. When I pressed: Answer, the caller automatically went right to my Blue Tooth speaker. The dude’s voice was without accent. I surmised he was an Anglo. He took off into his pitch without any prompt. My half-listening brain surmised that it was for time shares.
Without thinking, my personal light bulb illuminated inside my head giving me the premise for my counter attack. By now he had gone on for at least fifteen seconds without me saying a word:
“Stop right there!” I commanded. “I haven’t heard a word you were saying. Look, man, I know you’re trying to make a sale, but I’m going through a difficult time in my life. I’ve decided to transition from being a man to a woman and do you really think I care about what you are trying to sell?
The caller went silent but I could tell he was still there. Knowing he was on the ropes, I went for the kill shot and continued: “Since I have you on the phone, let me ask you a question, what do you think of the name, Denise?
He hung up.
Game, set and match.
On The Outside Looking Jn will not publish next week and will return on September 7, 2022
Last November, the Mets acquired a 33-year-old free agent, Mark Canha, who had spent most of his nine-year career with the Oakland Athletics. Mark signed a two-year contract worth $26.5 million.
In mid-July, Newsday published a piece about Canha with the title, “Canha is enjoying the ride.” Written by, sportswriter, Tim Healy, this scribe took us on a game day subway ride with Canha from his apartment on the Upper Side of Manhattan to Citi Field.
Canha explained that he and his wife, Marci, are city people and commuting from Times Square to Willets Point on the No. 7 Flushing Line was, “Practical, it’s cheap, it’s pretty reliable. It drops me off right at the stadium. Why not? It’s New York. I fell like that’s what you do.”
Healy, the author did admit that Canha’s subway adventures were not an-every game choice, but he did make his way by subway to one of the Yankees games.
As I read Healy’s piece, I had a light bulb moment of how far a baseball player riding New York transit had evolved. Canha rode the subway for fun.
Once upon a time, players rode out of necessity. What follows is the last instance of one MLB ball player making that long and lonely ride for the last time.
I wrote about this in the following piece with the title, “Choo Choo Coleman, R.I.P,” in 2016:
Several Metropolitan daily newspapers reported the death of Clarence (Choo Choo) Coleman on August 16. The New York Times reported his age as either 78 or 80. Their obituary included two quotes by Roger Angell about Choo Choo: “He handles out side curve balls like a man fighting bees.” And a second referring to his speed on the bases: “This is an attribute that is about as essential to catchers as neat handwriting.”
Their obituary included the following story about Choo Choo (who called everyone “Bub.”) “Perhaps the best-known anecdote about Coleman is one that, in later years, he said never happened, though Ralph Kiner, the former slugger and broadcaster, assured The New York Times that it had. In 1962, Kiner interviewed Coleman (on his post-game show, Kiner’s Korner) and asked, ‘What’s your wife’s name and what’s she like?’ Coleman replied, ‘Her name is Mrs. Coleman – and she likes me, Bub.”
Choo Choo also had the curious distinction of being the only baseball player I ever encountered when I was young. It happened in the spring of 1966. I left Shea Stadium with my friends, Bill and Jimmy about an hour after a game ended, We had successfully made our way into the private Diamond Club for a couple of beers before we departed for Manhattan. I wrote about it in 2005 as part of a piece called “Shea Stadium Nights:”
Since the baseball game ended early on a Friday night in May, Manhattan beckoned to us. Being city kids, cars weren’t a factor so we climbed the Willets Point-Shea Stadium elevated station to catch the No. 7 train bound for Times Square. As we waited for the train to arrive, we noticed a fellow standing against the station’s wall. Jimmy looked at him several times before deciding to take the chance that he recognized this man. Jimmy walked away from Bill and me to speak to him. Instinctively, we quieted to hear their exchange. Jimmy looked at him and said, “You’re Choo Choo Coleman.”
Coleman looked back at Jimmy and said, “Bub, that’s cool, people don’t usually recognize me.”
We all asked for his autograph. He had been the Mets’ best catcher during 1962 and 1963, their first two seasons. We’d all seen him play at the Polo Grounds. Labeled, “a defensive catcher,” his hitting left much to be desired. Clarence, “Choo Choo” Coleman played in 55 games in 1962 hitting .250 and 106 games in 1963 hitting .178. The following year, he was farmed out to a minor league team and he did not make it back to the Mets until the 1966.
We said good-bye when the train arrived. We talked about how strange it was that a baseball player had no alternative but to take the subway alone.
The next day, the Mets cut Choo Choo. His come-back had only lasted six games before we met him and that subway ride was his last trip home from the Show. Sad, but that’s where a .188 average will take a defensive player.
R.I.P. Choo Choo
On the morning of Saturday, July 23rd, I received the following message from my buddy, Geoff Jones: “You will probably want to see the story about the late Capt. Joseph Hazelwood.”
Geoff’s message found me sitting on the back porch of our house in Marlow, New Hampshire enjoying my breakfast. I took a sip of coffee, then lowered my cup and murmured “You poor S.O.B., I hope you are at peace.“ I opened the lead story in a maritime daily blog known as, gCaptain Daily, whose headline read: “Captain Joseph Hazelwood, Former Master of the Exxon Valdez, Passes Away”
Mike Schuler, the author put the captain’s age as 75 and noted that he died on Friday, July 22nd Hazelwood was born on September 24, 1946, one of the first Baby-Boomers.
Geoff’s understatement that he thought I’d probably want to see this notice, made me smile. My career at Marsh & McLennan and in the marine insurance market was defined by the disaster that began in Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of Alaskan crude oil causing one of the worst environmental disasters that impacted over a thousand miles of shoreline devastating the virgin shoreline and millions of creatures that swim in the sea and fly in the air. The only good news was no human lives were lost.
Curiously, we were also in residence in our Marlow house when the Valdez stranded on that Good Friday. I still recall receiving a call from Mike Kern, an insurer with whom my team had placed a portion of the Exxon program. “Am I screwed?” he lamented.
“I don’t think so, Mike. The biggest spill to date cost $100 million and you sit excess of $600 million.” Satisfied, he hung up to enjoy his Easter weekend. Little did we know that the enormous clean-up costs, the resultant reparations, claims by the fishing industry, the people of Alaska, the state of Alaska, Uncle Sam and all of the lawyers and others would result in Exxon going through that $600 million like the Accela goes through Metuchen, New Jersey.
Capt. Hazelwood was treated like a rented mule in the press. Big bad Exxon quit on him in a New York minute. He lived in Huntington, NY and, when he arrived back home, a despicable District Judge compared Joe to Hitler and set a punitive bail treating him as a flight risk. He was accused and convicted in the newspapers, not just the rags, but also The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, of having been inebriated while navigating his charge, the Exxon Valdez, outward bound from the port of Valdez to the open sea.
The only people and institutions that stood by Hazelwood were his SUNY Maritime, his Alma- Marta and his classmates who had become maritime lawyers and came to his defense.
You may ask, “Why should I believe the tale you are telling?” The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Since I had to spend eight years of my career as the primary witness for Exxon in their dispute with their insurers, I developed a unique insider’s understanding of what transpired that fateful night on the bridge of the Exxon Valdez.
Once the captain maneuvered the tanker into the outbound shipping channel leading to the Gulf of Alaska, he received communications from the Coast Guard advising him that there was ice calved from a local glacier in that channel. In response, he asked the USCG if he could cross over inro the incoming channel that was free of ice?
The USCG confirmed that channel was free of incoming traffic so the Exxon Valdez could make passage there.
Paper work was then, as it is now a great burden for ships’ captains. Hazelwood had to bring his own log up-to-date documenting the Exxon Valdez’s departure, so he turned over the watch to the third mate with specific instructions when to move into the incoming lane, how long to stay and when to return to the outgoing lane.
The next significant thing Captain Hazelwood experienced while working in his cabin was that the tanker had stranded on Bligh Ridge…and so it goes. Hazelwood immediately called Coast Guard to report the accident.
Blame fell on Hazelwood and to Sperry, makers of the navigation system.
Perhaps human error? During my long ordeal, gathering evidence, discovery and multiple depositions, I heard several times from different sources that there was another explanation. It seemed that the third mate, male, and the helmsman, female, had a thing going that may have caused them to take their eyes off the road and the Sperry navigating machine.
When asked about this years later in a CNN interview, Captain Hazelwood replied, “If you want to find the real story, it’s easily available.”
As far as I know, he never expanded on this. Joe was a real man. He was the captain; the safe navigation of the ship was his. He sucked it up, took responsibility for being in command and took the real story to his grave.
Curiously, not one single newspaper carried his obituary. Perhaps that’s a blessing?
RIP Captain Joseph Hazelwood, you paid your dues.
Dear readers, I realized that at some point in writing my two OBX pieces, I would need to explain my relationship with the beach and the ocean. I have always hated the beach, but, as a kid, I found joy body surfing in the Atlantic Ocean. Most Sundays in July and August, Mom and I would attend the 7:30 Mass at St. Aloysius R.C. Church, rush home after mass and pack up for our ride to the beaches in Far Rockaway. My Aunt Mildred would pick-us-up in her 1950 Dodge. I would occupy the back seat with my cousin, Patty, two-years younger than me.
One quarter admitted us to a municipal parking lot with access to the beach so long as we arrived before 10 am. We hauled our stuff over the boardwalk, back onto the sand and toward the surf. We planted the umbrella and established our beach domain with wooden folding chairs and blankets. I attacked the surf ASAP where I lived most of the day. The surf is where I learned to swim on my own and ride the waves on my belly…glory days.
My memory of that time plus the continued love of a beach vacation by my family motivated me to first go to the Outer Banks in 2019. We celebrated Mary Ann’s 75th in 2020 at the house called Run-A-Way Bay, liked it so much that we renewed this house in Duck for 2021 and 2022.
As for me; I hate the sun, the sand, bathing suits, and lately, the surf. But still, I find the sound of the mighty Atlantic crashing against the shore irresistible, and I sit on the deck in the shade as I listen to the surf and smell the ocean as I recall those long-ago days in Far Rockaway.
Run-A-Way Bay fit us like a glove. The second floor featured an inside dining room and an outside picnic table that was perfect for the eleven of us. An unexpected extra was access to a full-size swimming pool about one-quarter of a mile from the house. Part of a separate resort called, Sanderling, apparently, our rental included the use of their facilities. The pool provided all the access to swimming that I needed.
We again avoided crowds and eating in restaurants during both our 2021 and 2022 stays. Mary Ann and I made one exception in 2021 when we ate on an outdoor patio one night.
Drew announced that he would not wear shoes during that stay and he kept this commitment. His closest call came when we went to Five Guys for take-out. No shoes, no service, but I delivered his burger and fries to the car.
What the hell, we renewed Run-A-Way Bay, for 2022. Another great beach vacation despite a troubled extended weather system that parked itself along the coast from Key West to the Carolinas. It produced daily forecasts of doom and gloom, but, lucky us, the awful weather never made it as far north as Duck.
Late in the summer of 2021, Mary Ann and I came across a clearance sale of beach paraphernalia at an Ocean Job Lot store in Newport, NH. A open sided gazebo caught our eyes that came with four weights (price extra) to keep it steady in moderate wind. Fortunately, its dimensions fit into our SUV and we brought it down to Duck where it became one of the hits of our vacation. It survived to make the return trip north.
Drew had just graduated college and a new job kept him from joining us. It became clear that this would be our last OBX vacation. At our arrival pizza dinner, I announced that I would take as many who would come to Kitty Hawk to see the Wright Brothers memorial, exhibits and the museum. In the end, Cace, Marlowe, Tom and Mary Ann signed on.
As Cace and I walked through the exhibits we came across a photo box that showed the images of famous American aviators and astronauts. The screen in the center changed the images every ten-seconds, but on either side, there were permanent images. On the right side, Orville and Wilber Wright. On the left, a color photo of Sally Ride.
My 15-year-old grandson looked down at me and asked: “Why is her photo on display instead of Neal Armstrong’s?”
“Cace, she was the first American woman astronaut to go into space.”
“C’mon Grandpa, Armstrong was the first person, ever, to walk on the moon!”
Point made.
I rewarded Cace, myself and all of us for their loyalty in joining me to see Kitty Hawk by having take-out lunches from a nearby Five Guys.
Early on Saturday morning we joined the seemingly endless convoy of vacationers making their way back to the mainline. Between traffic and needed senior stops, we made it home in just under twelve hours.
Once again, we broke even. Back home in Connecticut, Jodie texted Mary Ann: “My favorite vacations, ever. I wish I could spend all summer on that beach.
Part One: 2019-2020
As I approached the 75th Anniversary of my birth that I’d have to face on February 22, 2019, I decided that I wanted to do something different than have a pitiful party. I decided to sponsor a special vacation for our family, a week on North Carolina’s Outer Banks (OBX).
Mary Ann and I had visited this unique treasure once before, for two nights in early May of 2000. We were on our first retirement journey, a car trip down the Atlantic Coast from Ocean City, Maryland to Savannah, Georgia. We stayed in a small motel in Kitty Hawk and visited the site of Wright Brothers first flight and the dunes in Kill Devil Hills.
This time I wanted to rent a house. I had only two criteria’s, it had to be big enough to accommodate our three families comfortably and it had to be up against the dunes with direct access to the beach. The second, an extravagance, was most important to me. Beth found our house in Nags Head and booked it from Saturday, July 13 to Saturday, July 20.
We crossed the Bridge over Currituck Sound in a monsoon, rain so intense that we could only stay on the roadway by watching the tail lights of the car in front of us. We loved the house. Mary Ann and I enjoyed a view of the ocean from our third story nest, especially a mid-week hurricane that passed us harmlessly about 75 miles out to sea. No rain, mild wind, but an angry Atlantic churned up by its passing. Cace shared our large sleeping quarters as he was the odd-man out with his two older cousins, brothers Drew and Matt.
Mary Ann and I took Cace, Marlowe and Samantha south to Hatteras to see the National Seashore, the lighthouse and to have lunch. Our house was a, “A seven iron shot away from Jennettes Pier,” as Michael put it. We ate at a restaurant located on the pier several times. When Matt wore a tank top to our first meal, that turned out to be a “Howdy Doody don’t do,” a waiter gave him a tee bearing the name of the restaurant; all was well.
We had a great time and, in the words my old colleague from Chicago, Jim Hagalow, “We broke even, everybody was still talking to each other.
Mary Ann decided that we would repeat our vacation in 2020 to celebrate her 75th birthday, but when we called the rental office, an agent explained that our house was already taken. She offered us an alternative week, but we weren’t prepared to act.
Our two children and their spouses informed us that they wished to return in 2020 earlier in July, preferably the week of Independence Day. The 4th would fall on a Saturday, so this became our proposed arrival day. Beth, heroically once again turned to the task of finding us a vacation house. Again, success, Beth found a big house behind the dunes in the town of Duck, about 18 miles north of Nags Head. The exterior and interior photographs looked swell and I signed the contract. Again, I declined to buy hurricane insurance, but, in the fall of 2019, we were all clueless how COVID would play havoc with our very sense of being. (Memo to file: Did we even know what a pandemic was in the summer of 2019?)
True, OBX was not on our radar when the virus blindsided us in March of 2020, separated us from each other by quarantine and condemned us to listen and watch daily doom and gloom during our lock down. As we flipped the calendar from March to April and then from April to May, I could see glimpses of blue sky, despite the gloom and doom.
OBX is a major mid-Atlantic tourist destination and as Memorial Day began to draw closer and closer, I tracked, the pronouncements of the local North Carolina medical authorities. Sure enough, they lifted obstacles, restrictions and prohibitions; OBX was opened to outsiders -OBX returned to business as usual…Hallelujah…” Let us rejoice and be glad!”
Silly me, everybody in our family, from the youngest to me were monitoring the same thing: “Please God, make this happen.”
Still, we knew we had to set rules, F..king rules. We had to shop every day, but we avoided restaurants at all costs. We did get take-outs, but we also relied on meals we brought from home.
I do believe that COVID did reduce the volume of traffic we encountered heading south on the Delmarva Peninsula. Perhaps, the ocean resorts in Delaware and Maryland were more restrictive, though I doubt it. We did well until we crossed the bridge over the sound. Instead of continuing south on that four-lane highway south to Nags Head, our GPS directed us onto a
two-lane road, north to Duck.
We were last to arrive. But, of course, they are young and we are old and we must deal with issues they have yet to encounter. On this day, we got lucky. The traffic that locked them in for over an hour melted away allowing us to join them at the house in a timely manner.
We brought Sicilian pizza, for dinner. Dinner was so much more than pizza. It was an affirmation, a thanksgiving and a celebration of survival, a renewal and, most importantly, a reunion of family. We were free of COVID, Thank GOD, Thank GOD of COVID, at last.
(To be continued…)
This piece was written by a friend of mine, Brian Davidson. I edited it and thought up the title. His piece reflects the man he was. We lost Brian to cancer in 2016.
George, the owner of the sporting goods store handed me my new annual Alaskan fishing license. “Where are you from?”
“Houston,” I replied. “I got a job with a contractor to settle insurance claims so I’ll be up here for thirty-days at a time for six to nine months. I don’t read much, hate television and I don’t want to spend my free time in bars so I figured I’d try fishing”
“Well, you picked a good time to start fishing for pink salmon. They start to run in May and you can fish as late as you like because it doesn’t get dark until about 2 a.m. I’ll help you pick out the kind of equipment and clothing you’re going to need.”
George selected a rod and reel, a net, tackle box, wading boots, thermal socks, and long johns. “Why do I need thermal socks and long underwear in June?”
“The water temperature in Prince William Sound does not get out of the thirties. You’ll be happy to be wearing them when you wade out into the sound. If you don’t have a sweater or light gloves, you should buy them too.”
I figured he knew what he was talking about so I kept quiet as my pile kept rising on his counter. When he finished counting and totaling my purchases, he reached behind the counter and opened a wooden box and placed an odd-looking fishing lure in the palm of his hand. A big silver spoon with a big red plastic diamond shaped thingy glued to it, it looked like something that your grandmother used to wear on her chest to church on Sunday.
“This is the best lure for catching pink salmon. It’s called it a pixie. If I were you, I’d guard it with my life. I’m running out of them and I don’t know when I’ll get new ones in stock.”
I asked him how many I could have and he agreed to sell me six for six dollars each. I started asking him about places to fish, but he stopped me and called over an Eskimo guy hanging around the store. “Hey, Billy, come tell this guy where to fish.”
Billy and I got to talking and he agreed to meet me at a camp-ground located on the shoreline the next night. We seemed to hit it off and became regular fishing buddies. Also, it didn’t take long for me to realize just how valuable Billy was to me. The first thing I noticed that night was that when I cast my pixie out into the water, it kept going down and down and down. I asked Billy what was going on.
“After about ten feet, the bottom drops 500 to 600 feet. If you wander out too far and take the plunge, you’ll have about five minutes left to live.”
I became a good angler catching five to ten fish each night which I cut loose or gave to people staying in the camp-ground who gathered to watch the master fisherman. I usually traded the fish for a cold beer and a relaxing chat with these tourists and retirees in their trailers, campers and RVs. The fishing alleviated my boredom from the seemingly endless task of settling claims. I only regretted losing my pixies which made me feel badly as my supply dwindled.
One night while fishing with Billy, I cast out my next to last pixie. It didn’t hit the water and my rod started to jerk away from me pulling skyward. “What the hell…,” I shouted as I looked up. To my astonishment, I realized that I had hooked a sea gull on its butt. People on the bank shouted at me to cut the line, but all I could think of was my six- dollar pixie attached to a bird that was maneuvering like an out-of-control kite. Up and down, it flew screeching like all hell as we continued our struggle. I had to let out line fearing that the tension would break it and the gull would make off with my pixie. Finally, it went straight up then came crashing down onto the bank to the oohs and ahs of the crowd who were watching the show.
I ran out of the water, grabbed onto this pecking and clawing creature who continued to screech for its mother. In desperation, the gull threw up a regurgitated fish onto my boot, but I managed to get a firm grip on its mangy butt to retrieve my pixie. As I stood up, I heard loud and clear, “They’re not very good to eat.”
Rather embarrassed, I yanked my pixie out of its butt, released the gull who flew away and gave each and every one of my admirers a very low bow.
On the Outside Looking in will not publish next week and will return on July 27, 2022
When I was researching last week’s piece about Liberty Ships, I discovered that one of these ships was the S.S. George Handley named after a man who served in the 1st Georgia Battalion of the Continental Army where he rose to the rank of captain. He was taken prisoner at Augusta, Georgia in 1780. After the war, Handley served as Governor of Georgia from 1788 to 1789 and was instrumental in the drafting of Georgia’s state-constitution. He died in 1793 at the age of forty-one.
George Handley was the second of over three dozen of her sisters constructed at the Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation’s pop-up yard in Savannah, Georgia. Designated. Hull No. 342, construction began on May 28, 1942 and the Handley was launched on December 7, 1942, the first anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
George Handley never entered commercial service. The government agency, War Shipping Administration Transport, (WSAT), requisitioned the ship and turned it into a troop carrier to be operated by the U.S. Army Transport Service, (USAT). Handley was used to transport European Axis prisoners to POW camps that sprang up in various rural parts of America including Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Imagine how lucky these POW’s felt escaping the war to perform manual labor in the lap of luxury.
Handley had a carrying capacity of 550 men per voyage. There is no record, I could find of what Handley carried on its outbound voyages. Neither is there any record about its post-war career, if any. I did find that George Handley was scrapped in 1964 and it is reasonable to believe that the ship sent those 19 years mothballed in one of those reserve fleets like those on the Hudson River south of the Bear Mountain Bridge.
Ordinarily, the saga about this ship would peter out right here. However, by a curious coincidence, when I first joined Marsh & McLennan in 1971, the manager of the firm’s world-wide marine operations was George W. Handley.
George was bigger than life and a natural leader. You knew Handley was present every time he entered the room. As one of my colleagues put it, “Working for Handley is like working for George C. Scott when he played Patton!”
Our George was a force that influenced and motivated all who fell under his spell. At the time I was beginning to come of age at the firm, I became his go-to guy for international business. George would travel to Europe and the far East to acquire shares of insurances for me to place in our domestic hull market. Soon, I came to realize that I was his assault trooper certain to fail in making the deal to convince marine underwriters to take a share of the latest international fleet George sent me out to peddle.
Sometimes, more aggressive underwriters gave me a lewd and blasphemous message to take
back to Handley. I never told him these messages and, when I’d report back to him that John Blackman, Terry Deeks, or Bill Petersen essentially threw me out of his office, he would thank me for my efforts and say, “I’ll get back to you later today.”
Later those afternoons, George would tell me over the phone to come up to his office. I was on nine, he was on eleven, at our head-quarters at 1221 Avenue of the Americas. I took the closest stairway two steps at a time.
George would explain to me what participations on our house clients I would have to set aside for those insurers he favored to place that risk. One time, I vented my frustration to him. I said, “You know, George, it can be tough being your sapper. I throw myself on the enemies barb wire with an explosive charge to create the path to glory.”
George got my message, In 1974, I was promoted to Assistant Vice President before anybody else. George, as was his style sent me the binder folder that the Marsh & McLennan directors received at their meeting in Dallas. It contained a personal note to me that read:
TO: JJD
From: GWH
Congratulations. It was a close vote, but I voted for you.
George Handley passed away in 1975 from a heart attack
The ironic part of this story is that in the 1960s and 1970s those Liberty Ships reached the end of any usefulness and were being scrapped in droves. One maritime entrepreneur thought up the idea to make scale model Liberty Ships cast from the steel from the actual sisters being scrapped.
George loved the idea and started collecting these steel models to give away to visiting customers and overseas brokers when they visited his office. I asked him one day: “George, I wonder what the Japanese and Germans really think about you giving them models built from the steel of the ships that heled to defeat them?”
That comment received a super scowl!
George never learned that one Liberty bore his name. There would have been no living with hm if he made this discovery.
Grant me this aside. George had a wicked sense of humor and loved to brag when good things were said about him. Sometime in about 1973, a short interview with Marsh’s CEO, Jack Regan. appeared in Time Magazine when Time was an important news source. The piece quoted Regan as saying:
“Even Exxon, with all their expertise counts on Marsh & McLennan for their needs. For example, they depend on the advice of George Handley for their extensive marine operations.”
When George became aware of the piece, he let us all know, “Isn’t it nice. Time mentioned all four of us, Jack, Henry (Marsh), Don (McLennan) and me”
I informed those of us still around who knew George back in the day about my discovery. I voiced my opinion that had he known about that ship, he would have commissioned a heroic portrait of the SS George Handley fighting its way through rough seas on the North Atlantic in pursuit of victory.
Perhaps he would have lithographs made, framed for VIP customers, rolled up copies for the rest of us. Maybe, even Christmas cards!
The best reply to the idea of a framed original oil of the US George Handley hanging in GWH’s office behind his desk came from his former secretary, Diane Robertson, “John, you are absolutely right, and guess who would have had to feather dusted that stupid painting every single day!”
“On The Outside Looking In” will not publish next week, but, God willing and the Creek don’t rise, will return on July 13.
June 2022 (Originally published in March 2014.)
During the first two years of World War II, Great Britain lost so many cargo ships that this island nation was forced to recognize a dreadful possibility; it would be starved out of the war unless it quickly acquired replacement ships. New ships had to be constructed rapidly, be simple to operate by the rawest of crews and be easily replaced. Only America had the resources to build them. Franklin Roosevelt adopted his “short of war” policy to d to authorize The Maritime Administration, (Marad) to adopt a modified British design for these new freighters, officially, the EC2-S-C1, but better known as the, “Liberty Ship.”
The first Liberty, Patrick Henry, was laid down on April 30, 1941, launched on September 27th and finished on December 30th. FDR personally christened this ship one of fourteen launched that day. Patrick Henry took 150 days to fabricate from first steel to launch with a total building time of 244 days. Building time dropped dramatically to an average of 42 days as prefabricating techniques improved and, one ship, Robert E. Peary, went from first steel to launch in 4 days, 15 ½ hours.
In all 2,711 Liberty Ships were built in 18 shipyards. Almost all U.S. Flag Liberties were named after dead Americans. The famous included Presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt but also James Buchanan and even Jefferson Davis. John Hancock was among signers of the Declaration of Independence so honored, but so were the less notable; William Hooper, Francis Lewis, Josiah Bartlett and Button Gwinnett.
Other patriots abound; Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Nathan Hale, Betsey Ross, Samuel Adams, Israel Putnam, John Paul Jones, Molly Pitcher, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine and Paul Revere. Names familiar from our Civil War; Julia Ward Howe, Matthew B. Brady, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Fredrick Douglass, Joshua Chamberlain, Barbara Frietchie, George A. Custer, Harriet Tubman, Jubal Early, Stephen A. Douglas, Winfield Scott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, James Longstreet and Philip H. Sheridan. (Alas, SS John W. Brown didn’t bear the fiery abolitionist’s name; John W. was an early 20th Century labor leader.)
Men and women adventurers and explorers included Davy Crockett, Wyatt Earp, Ponce De Leon, James (Wild Bill) Hickok, Amelia Earhart, Geronimo, Daniel Boone, Annie Oakley, Amerigo Vespucci, Kit Carson, Pocahontas, William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody and of course, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Famous American wordsmiths included Mary Austin, Charles Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack London, Anne Hutchinson, Zane Grey, Washington Irving, Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Emma Lazarus, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Ring Lardner, Joyce Kilmer, Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Cullen Bryant.
Song, dance, stage and sports; Abner Doubleday, P.T. Barnum, John L. Sullivan, Edwin Booth, Lou Gehrig, John Philip Sousa, Carol Lombard, Will Rogers, John Ringling, George M. Cohan, Christy Matteson, George Gershwin, Knute Rockne and George Gipp.
Inventors, industrialists, household names; Alexander Graham Bell, George Eastman, Samuel Colt, Richard Gatling, James Bowie, Edison, Morse, Robert Fulton, George Pullman, R.J. Reynolds, W. R. Grace, Goodyear, DuPont, John Deere, Glenn Curtiss and Wilbur Wright.
Architects, engineers, doctors, scientists, jurists; Mayo Brothers, George Washington Carver, Sanford White, George Goethals, Johns Hopkins and Booker T. Washington. Publishers, attorneys and politicians: Adolph S. Ochs, Edward Everett, Wendell Wilkie, Horace Greeley, Clarence Darrow, William Gorgas, John Marshall, James G. Blaine and Louis Brandeis.
Names local to New York; Al Smith, Samuel J. Tilden, Franklin K. Lane, C.W. Post, Floyd Bennett, William Floyd, Jacob Riis, and Peter Cooper.
The forgettable and forgotten; Uriah Rose (Arkansas politician founded the Rose Law Firm: see Hillary R. Clinton), Billy Sunday (evangelist), Sun Yat Sen (first president of the Rep. of China), Nachman Syrkin (Zionist), Andreas Honcharenko (no record found except her ship), Virginia Dare (first white person born in America), Albino Perez (Mexican politician, governor of New Mexico, assassinated one month in office), Archibald Mansfield (Reverend Mansfield led Seaman’s Church Institute), Sewell Seam (Appalachian coal mining developer), Hinton Helper (North Carolina, opposed slavery for curious reasons before the war; a white supremacist after the war.)
These and other names of ships can be explained by a fund-raising provision that any group that raised two million dollars in war bonds could nominate a name for a ship.
Far more Liberty Ships survived the war than had been anticipated as the tide for the Battle of the Atlantic turned in favor of the Allies by the later part of 1943. After V.J. Day, almost 1,000 U.S. Flag Liberties, declared surplus, became the backbone of international merchant fleets replacing the ships lost during the war. They remained a mainstay well into the 1960s until the container ship revolution finally sent them to the breakers. They were joined by their U.S. Flag sisters who had spent almost all of the years after the war resting and rusting tied up side-by-side in reserve fleets located in American bays and rivers. Deemed old and obsolete, they too were towed to scrap yards.
But two survived to carry on, the aforementioned, John W. Brown, based in Baltimore (named for the labor leader) and the Jeremiah O’Brien based in San Francisco. The O’Brien carries the name of a native of Maine who commanded the sloop, Unity that captured the HMS Margaretta at the Battle of Machias, ME, the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War. Both Liberties remain operational and make several short voyages in protected bays each season. May they live long and prosper.
Ukrainians proudly considered Mriya to be the queen of the skies. Mriya, meaning dream, and pronounced, Mer-EE-ah, like the heroine in “West Side Story.” Its existence ended suddenly and tragically on February 24, 2022 when Putin, began his war of aggression against Ukraine.
The An-225, a one of a kind, was at rest inside its custom-made hanger at Hostomel Airport outside of Kyiv. The crew had flown the giant home to its operating base on February 2nd, after it finished what turned out to be its last mission flying COVID test kits from China to Africa. On the first day of their invasion, the Russians bombed Hostomel and in the process, destroyed the An-225.
Ironically, the concept behind the design of this airplane was part of the Soviet Union’s (USSR) continual effort to compete with NASA’s space shuttle program. NASA had converted a surplus Boeing 747 to carry our prototype non-space ready shuttle Enterprise for non-powered launches allowing the crew to practice the necessary gliding techniques that the real shuttle pilots would need to make successful landings at the end of their missions.
Once the first shuttle, Columbia, went into space, the same 747 returned those shuttles that landed at Edwards Air Force Base back to the Kennedy launch center. Its final mission was to distribute the remaining shuttles to their retirement homes.
The An-225 first flew on December 21, 1988. In 1990, it carried the Soviet’s version of their non-space ready shuttle, the Buran, model number, 1.01. When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the Buran space shuttle program was cancelled and the AN-225 was relegated to storage where it remained until 1994.
But the An-225 was clearly needed to satisfy the demands for an extreme heavy-lift cargo aircraft. No need to re-invent the wheel: the An-225 had a lifting capacity of 550,000 pounds.
Oleksandr Halunenko was the giant’s first pilot having the honor to be at the controls for its inaugiful first flight in 1988. Now, 76, he lives in retirement in a suburb of Kyiv not far from where the airplane he considers to be his child was destroyed.
Jeffrey Gettleman interviewed Mr. Halunenko for The New York Times, and wrote about his thoughts: “lt takes a lot to impress the Americans, but I’ll never forget the crowds that lined up to see us and no one knew where Kyiv was,” he laughed.
The Antonov Company re-purposed the Mriya for commercial use to fly extreme heavy-lift cargoes world-wide that no other airplane could handle. Powered by six monster jet engines, three under each wing and with a landing gear of 32 wheels, the An-225 was longer and heavier than any other airplane.
There are many videos made of the giant’s take-offs as the An-225 needed every foot of a runway to slowly lift off. Poised at the starting point of a runway, the airplanes wings drooped under the weight of its six engines and all of the fuel stored in those tanks. As the giant rumbled down the runway, the wings begin to rise as the giant gains speed. Still, the experienced crew knew that they must hold their charge bound to the runway for as long as possible while building up sufficient speed to lift the nose allowing the An-225 to leave the ground, overcome gravity’s pull and gently lift into the air, becoming airborne and achieving the miracle of flight.
“In 2001, Mr. Halunenko broke several aviation records, including for the heaviest cargo load ever lifted in the air. The plane also set the world’s record for transporting the longest piece of air cargo – a 138 foot-foot turbine blade – and hosting the highest-altitude art exhibition.”
“By 2004, Mr. Halunenko had retired as its pilot. But Mriya carried on. In the past two years it made hundreds of flights, often stuffed with COVID-19 supplies. For one journey to Poland, 80,000 people live-streamed the landing. Newly painted in yellow and blue, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, Mriya became Ukraine’s ambassador to the world.”
American intelligence warned that the Russians planned to seize Hostomel airport as part of their opening blitzkrieg, but for reasons we may never know, the Mriya’s owners didn’t fly their airplane to a safer location.
“At 6:30 a.m. on Feb. 24, the day the war started, Russian missiles slammed into a national guard base next to the airport. A few hours later, Russian helicopters blasted the airport with more missiles that hit the hangers where Mriya and other airplanes were stored.”
Like other giants of the sky from previous eras like the Hindenburg and the Pan American flying boats, this unique airplane is lost to history.
Still, Mr. Halunenko’s pride is intact. He told the reporter, “No other country has created such an aircraft. Mriya”, he added quietly, “(She gave) Ukraine prestige.”
John Delach 