John Delach

This is my 200^th Blog. The first, “An Incredible Story” appeared on October 16, 2013 and this followed a week later. Super storm Sandy will be five years removed this October but the flooding it brought to the Metropolitan area is reminiscent of the flooding Harvey brought to Texas and Louisiana and Irma to Florida.  

Pick your place of dreams, Rockaway, Staten Island, Long Beach, or the Jersey Shore. A place of quiet and charm, on the water, away from the noise, the clutter, the things that make Gotham intolerable to ever consider living there. Sure, the Big Apple provides the infrastructure, money, the halls of commerce inviting people to come on board. The opportunity is there to make a good living, to succeed, grow, prosper and seek to achieve the American Dream. But who wants to live there?

These places of refuge provide safe alternatives to leave it all behind when the work day, or, more importantly, the work week ends. Places where people let their burdens go, as their pressures and the frustrations drift away. When the ferry touches shore at St. George, or a car or bus or train crosses a bridge and reaches Broad Channel, Rockaway, Long Beach or towns along the Shore, escape is at hand. Soon these people will be home, safe, happy and in their own element.

But, there is a trade off. By choosing to live by the beach, the water dwellers accept the challenge of the unforgiving sea. This, their ultimate fear is subsumed by the challenges of every day life, relegated to the background, rarely discussed, even when state and City fathers need to drum up “Armageddon” scenarios at the start of each hurricane season. Poor garbage collection, ordinary post-storms power restoration and slow snow removal after a typical City snow storm are enough to worry about.

But this time, it all went wrong. The enemy was the sea. The one they always warned about, the one that was the unthinkable, the “what if,” doomsday storm. This time the jet stream left the coast unprotected. A combination of a full moon, high tide and Sandy slamming into southern New Jersey produced winds and a surge that drove the Atlantic west back into the Jersey Shore, through the Narrows into New York Harbor up the Hudson and East Rivers flooding coastal Staten Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

It clobbered the historic islands in the Upper Harbor; Liberty, Ellis and Governor’s destroying the low-lying buildings. Fortunately, the Statue of Liberty, Castle Clinton, Fort Jay and the Grand Hall did not suffer water damage, but the infrastructure was severely damaged.

Next, to flood; Lower Manhattan and the East Side. The surge claimed office buildings, the World Trade Center memorial, NYU and Bellevue hospitals, inundated most of the subway tubes and the two automobile tunnels under the East River. Eighty-six million gallons of the Hudson River poured into the Hugh Carey-Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. The surge covered runways at LaGuardia and JFK.

The engineers on duty that night at Penn Station saved their charge. When they received word of how high the surge would be, they made a conscience decision to open the flood gates protecting the two Hudson River tunnels to funnel the inundation into these passages to New Jersey and away from the station. Their actions closed these tunnels for three days. If not, the station, its signals, electrical equipment and switches would have been out for weeks.

Flood water swept the auto receiving yards and container docks at Port Newark and Port Elizabeth, raced up the Hudson River flooding trendy Hoboken wrecking PATH, the old Hudson and Manhattan Tubes. Still, further north, the Hudson topped Metro North’s Hudson Division flinging boats and debris onto tracks and flooding nearby factories and warehouses in Westchester.

Sandy sent a monstrous wall of water into shore communities along the length of Long Island crushing its barrier islands. Starting in the west at Sea Gate, it spread across Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay, east along the entire Rockaway peninsular striking vulnerable Breezy Point where wind, rain and fire conspired to incinerate more than one hundred homes and water damage those that didn’t burn; R.I.P. Breezy Point.

Long Beach, Jones Beach and Fire Island were clobbered. Waterfront communities along Jamaica Bay and the Great South Bay were not spared; Broad Channel, Island Park, Freeport, Amityville, etc., Life that these folks signed onto ceased to exist. Even the train line to Long Beach and the subway line that stretched across Jamaica Bay weren’t spared. The surge destroyed electrical sub-stations, tore up the tracks and washed away the fill that supported them.

The beach communities along the North Shore and Connecticut received their dose of Sandy as the tide rose in Long Island Sound and winds pushed the surge west back towards the City drowning coastal sections of towns like Port Jefferson, Bayville and Fairfield.

Thousands of homes were wrecked, a plethora of cars destroyed and those beach life-styles, carefully planned, cultivated and developed erased, gone as if they never existed. The shore communities will never be the same. Homes may be rebuilt but minds cannot be and the daunting question will remain for all who live near the water and survived: “Do I stay, do I rebuild and what will happen the next time something this evil comes my way?”

Before I begin my tale of woe I would be remiss not to send a shout out to Jet Blue for the prompt action they took in the face of Hurricane Irma in capping the price for flights out of Florida at $99 a ticket. That is a fine example of what an airline can and should do. Jet Blue stepped-up and did the right thing.

Jet Blue began flying on February 11, 2000 with first flights to Buffalo and Fort Lauderdale from JFK. I first flew with them in January of 2001to Orlando and I become a regular flyer in 2003. Jet Blue became my airline of record because of their outstanding service by friendly staff on new airplanes with spacious leg room at reasonable prices

I understood why Jet Blue had an edge on those “so called” legacy airlines, American, Delta and United. Jet Blue, Frontier, Spirit and, to some extent, Southwest, didn’t have the burden of retiree benefits and pensions, current senior flight staff and ground crews most who enjoyed similar union contracts and benefits and old operating concepts. These upstarts had none of this baggage or burdens. Jet Blue and Southwest used this advantage to improve customer service while Frontier and Spirit settled on offering low-cost flying garbage cans.

Jet Blue grew and grew. They cast off the obsolete terminal at JFK inherited from the late TWA and built a super base surrounding the old historic bird shaped terminal. Time marches on and the burden of employee benefits is coming due. I saw the first indication of slippage when they announced that they would charge for baggage for the first time. Southwest now stands alone in advertising bags fly free. Admittedly, Jet Blue still gives you one free bag, yet I worry this a sign of things to come.

I didn’t waiver and Jet Blue continued as my preferred airline. Unfortunately, this commitment has been tested by a major glitch on a flight I scheduled from Tampa to JFK. Rather than explain to you what happened, I offer you the letter I wrote to their CEO and President, Robin Hayes:

Dear Sir,

This past June I booked four round-trip tickets on your airline for travel to Tampa, FL leaving on Saturday, September 30 and returning on Monday, October 2.

The New York Football Giants are playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at 4:30 on Sunday, October 1 and I will be attending this game with my son, Michael and his two boys, Andrew (17) and Matthew (15.)

Your airline has become my carrier of record since I retired in 2000 and I find the service to be better than any of the legacy airlines. I was pleased to find your schedule of flights to and from Tampa to be convenient. I was particularly happy with the return Flight 326 scheduled to leave Tampa 11:06 AM as this will give my family time to enjoy a post-game dinner. Therefore, I booked these flights through American Express.

You can imagine my shock and horror last Sunday when I received an email from AMEX advising that the ETD for Flight 326 had been changed to 6 AM. Seriously, is this your idea as to how to run an airline? A change of flight time of this magnitude is unconscionable just over a month prior to departure. Instead of a 9 AM wake-up call, it will now be for 3 AM.

For the record, your only other non-stop from TPA to JFK is #426 leaving at 8:55 PM.

Unfortunately, this is not my only bad experience with your airline. My wife and I were horribly delayed on both of our flights between JFK and Las Vegas last March, the first delay exceeding five hours and the second two hours.

I sense your quality of service slip-sliding away like so many others. Your new nickname should be JALA, Just Another Lousy Airline.

My daughter, Beth, prompted me to send an abbreviated version electronically to their customer relations department and two days later I received Jet Blue’s reply. Its essence was set out in the following sentence:

We’re able to offer accommodation on another JetBlue flight for the same or neighboring airport the day before, the day of or the day after your original flight.

I quickly ascertained Sarasota was nearest to Tampa but Orlando had multiple direct flights to JFK. I quoted that sentence to, Aaron, the Jet Blue agent I reached and as if by magic, I had four aisle seats booked on a flight leaving Orlando at 12:18 with no change in fare, add-ons or penalties. (I intend to fight rental car charges when all is done.)

Case closed, or so I thought but not quite. Enter Hurricane Irma! Everything hinges on Irma’s effects on Tampa…will Tampa be open for business now that Irma has passed? Two days ago, I would not be willing to bet the ranch on that. It appeared that despite my best efforts this could be a classic case of, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”

But the airport has re-opened and the Buccaneers confirmed this Sunday’s game against the Bears will be played at home in Raymond James Stadium. All I need now is to reach out to the Hampton Inn to confirm they are open and we will be good to go.

In March of 2012 I included the following excerpt in my piece entitled, “How We Name Things:”

A new bridge is being built across the Hudson River to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge. Its name appears up for grabs. Some pundits are petitioning that it be named after Pete Seeger in recognition of his work in cleaning up the Hudson River. A couple of problems with that. Ole Pete, despite his talents, was a member of the Communist Party and a life-long apologist for the Workers’ Paradise. Also, the existing bridge has already been christened with a politician’s name. It is the Malcolm Wilson-Tappan Zee Bridge named after Nelson Rockefeller’s lieutenant governor who became governor when Rocky became Gerald Ford’s VP. Alas Malcolm only lasted a year losing to the same Hugh Carey of tunnel fame.

But most importantly, if the new bridge is to receive a new name, it’s my bet that Andy Cuomo will name it after his papa, Mario.

All hail Delach for getting this right and all hail the new Super Mario Bridge. Traffic began to roll over a portion of this $4 billion project early on Saturday morning, August 25. When completed next year the bridge will have two separate spans each able to accommodate four lanes of traffic and two breakdown lanes. One will also support a bike lane and the other a pedestrian walkway. The part of the 3.1-mile bridge that crosses over the Hudson’s shipping channel is a cable-stayed design with the supporting cables anchored to the tops of the angled central reinforced concrete towers. Each span has four of these towers that artfully soar high above the spans in sharp contrast to the appearance of the old Tappan Zee, a worn-out erector set cantilevered bridge.

These spans have a curious reason for being located between Tarrytown and Nyack, New York. Its purpose was to connect the New York State Thruway (I-87) with roads leading to Manhattan.

Then Governor Thomas Dewey and Robert Moses (RM) didn’t want their thruway to enter New Jersey. If it did, the new bridge would belong to the Port Authority of NY and NJ whose charter gives it sole responsibility for all bridges and tunnels between these two states.

Construction began in 1952 during the height of the Korean War when steel was scarce and expensive. RM decided to build it on the cheap. Although the main steel truss span was built to code, the long low viaduct of almost 2.5 miles that took the span to Nyack was built on a wing and a prayer. Instead of using concrete and steel pilings to support the roadway, RM opted for wooden pilings. When it opened in 1955, the bad news was its realistic life-expectancy was 50 years, but RM brought it in at $81 million ($361 million in today’s dollars.)

Albany politicians began playing kick the can down the road as the sands ran out and 2005 came knocking on the door. They funded one band aide after another to keep the aging structure safe, all the while crossing their fingers that when the rent came due, it would be some other politican’s problem. They ignored the rotting those awful worms made as they made meals out of the wooden pilings. George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson ducked the bullet and kicked the problem down the road. Enter the second coming of a Cuomo, son Andrew:

You don’t always get what you want but it seems sometimes, you get what you need.

Andrew Cuomo loves engineering and infrastructure, the bigger and more expensive, the better. In 2013, he performed a modern razzle-dazzle routine to fund this project: he beat off environmentalists, activists, lobbyists and s*** kickers all the while sucking up to the unions, the Feds the NYS legislature and other special interests needed to start work on the new bridge.

Andy boy did it. He took the bull by the horns and cast the beast aside and we are on our way to having an outstanding new bridge. Robert Moses, master builder and master of the razzle-dazzle would have been proud. Andy deserves using his power as the Gov. to name it after his dad.

Sure, $4 billion is a tough number to swallow, but did you know, Bob and Ray that…” it came in $1 billion under what the state feared it would cost.”

This money will also come due in good time. Cuomo anted-up and bet on the future. Yes, he kicked another can with a nut of $2 billion down the road. But he must have learned from RM: Build it first and answer questions later.

Hoorah for the Super Mario Bridge and Andy boy who utilized his inner Robert Moses to pull it off.

The tide to erase all reminders of injustice in the land of US is at flood stage. Agitators have moved on from their condemnation of Southern icons to seek out any, and all who may have showed hatred, demonstrated intolerance, prejudice, simple mindedness or just didn’t get it the same way as they see it. Goodbye, Bobby Lee, they have you on the run. Your monument in New Orleans; gone, baby, gone…so too those at Duke University, Baltimore and University of Texas, too…with more to come.

Stonewall has also received the bum’s rush…and so it goes.

I sit here in Port Washington far from the south and yet, mindful of the sharks circling hungry for the kill. They got Bobby in of all places outside of Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. It seemed Bobby was stationed there in the 1840s and planted an elm tree outside a local Episcopal Church. Over the years two plaques were placed there commemorating the tree and its successor. When the blow back from the Charlottesville riots reached Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the diocese cut down and removed the plaques. Curiously, that church is derelict, closed for lack of a congregation. Nevertheless, the diocese caved in a New York Minute…that’s when I knew common sense was in retreat.

Some group alerted the blood-thirsty media that the image of the Confederate Battle Flag (the stars and bars) was part of the tile decoration at the Times Square Subway Station. The MTA’s explanation that it was designed to represent Times Square as the “crossroads of the world” went unheeded. Rather than enter into a pissing contest, the MTA folded and is papering over the “offensive tiles” with faux tiles. This was no longer a retreat, it was a rout.

Quickly, attention shifted to Christopher Columbus. Ole Chris has been under siege for some time having been stricken in favor of Native American celebrations in several parts of the country. But not in New York! Here we have Columbus’ statue perched atop a high pedestal in the center of Columbus Circle. Italian-Americans funded the statue, built it dedicated it and gave it to NYC to show their pride…if you think for even a second that Chris is coming down…well good luck with that, Comrade Mayor Bill DeBlasio.

Next up; Peter Stuyvesant. Question, for the last two hundred years, who gave a damn about Pete except to note that he had a peg leg and took the hit when the Brits took over. The tom-toms are beating and anyone with a grudge to settle is on the warpath. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, head of the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center told The New York Post: “Peter Stuyvesant was an extreme racist who targeted Jews and other minorities…from settling in New Amsterdam. New York…should take the lead in denouncing Stuyvesant’s bigotry.”

I hope Ms D-L was happy to get that off her chest…it must have been a long time coming.

And the beat goes on…in Philadelphia, there’s a movement to take down a statue of Mayor Frank Rizzo, in Chicago, a statue of Italo Balbo who also has a highway named after him. There is a movement in Beantown to rename historic Faneuil Hall because Peter Faneuil, who donated the building to the city in 1743, was a slave owner and trader.

In Manhattan, we have a gold encrusted heroic statue of General Sherman at Grand Army Plaza, U.S. Grant in his Riverside Park tomb and Admiral Farragut overlooking Madison Square Park. What impurities are they hiding?

Stalin and Mao would take pride in those who want to re-write history by erasing the past. Are these activists aware that Congress restored Lee’s citizenship in 1975 by a vote of 407 to 10 and Gerald Ford signed it. Robert E. Lee is a national icon like him or not. It will be a long slog to erase Bobby.

Seventeen highways bear his name, ten high schools, two junior high schools and seven primary schools. Three towns, nine counties and two colleges have Lee in their names. The M-3, the first US Army battle tank to see action during WW-II was named after Bobby as was the USS Robert E. Lee, SSBN-601, a Polaris missile submarine that serviced from 1960 to 1983. Let us not forget that red Dodge Charger in the Dukes of Hazard.

Our past is our past. Our national stain was allowing slavery to exist at the founding of our nation. We suffered a horrendous civil war to end slavery but it took another hundred years to outlaw Jim Crow in those states that assumed they were still part of new confederacy able to suppress black citizens. To our shame, several border states and even our nation’s capital abided by Jim Crow.

It is our sad heritage that across America, racial inequality remains our national stain. Hatred, prejudice, profiling, and segregation continue to exist. That is the downside of our legacy, but erasing the past so somebody can feel good is nothing more than a fool’s errand.

The past is the past and to hell with the past. Teach your children well, the future is theirs to change.

Once again, I have fallen victim to the ever expanding and complicated electronic world. I am forever playing catch up trying to understand that what simply eludes me before being confronted by the next revolution.  All I know is I’m continually a day late and a dollar short.

My latest trial came when I set out to purchase tickets to a football game only to be forced to confront e-tickets as my only option. Living most of my life comfortable with paper tickets I had a hard time adjusting to the first generation of e-tickets that airlines promulgated sometime in the 1990s. I wasn’t happy when I was forced to print my own boarding passes first at the airport and then at home via my PC. At least, I could live with this process as it still produced a document I could hold in my hand.

Smart phones brought forth a new leap into this brave new world: Stand-alone e-tickets. The ticket parked on your phone was the only evidence you had of buying it. I did report last summer that I took the plunge when the Long Island Railroad introduced e-tickets. I bought a round trip using my IPhone. What I didn’t realize was e-tickets are the LIRR’s friend, not the passenger’s. Once you activate it, Big Brother ends its validation 30-minutes later. A paper ticket is good for a fixed period and if the collector doesn’t take it…you ride for free. Lesson learned, I stopped buying LIRR E-tickets.

My real introduction to e-tickets came this summer. I bought four tickets from StubHub in June for a road Giants game in Tampa versus the Buccaneers. I expected StubHub to alert me when they received the tickets from the seller so I could print them at home. Instead, I received the following message on August 8:

You’ll need to download the Buccaneers app on your smart phone and create an account with the same email address you used on StubHub. Once your tickets are transferred to you, you’ll receive an email notification from the primary and will be able to view this ticket transfer on the app. If you have any questions call us 24/7.

W.T.F! Damn right, I had questions. Fortunately, I had the good fortune to reach a rep at StubHub who had the patience of Job and a think on-your-feet mentality. By the end of our conversation I had the Buccaneer app on my IPhone, a valid account and a valid password. Believe me though, it was a slog about as painful as root canal. A lesser person would have cut me adrift. Not only was she successful, but she empowered me with a sense that I had this mastered. One thing did bother me though, she informed me that I would not receive the e-tickets until September 28 and the game was on October 1.

A good thing I didn’t fret too much over this narrow window because I received a new message from StubHub two days later:

Hi John,

Your tickets are ready to print in your StubHub account.

The message included detailed instructions about how to print my tickets and what I should do with them, i.e.: Bring them to the game…W.T.F!

Before I could react, a second email arrived this time from Ticketmaster that read:

Dear John,

Brad Bond is offering tickets to the event(s) listed below. To collect the items offered, please click on the button below and follow the simple instructions.  

I presumed Brad Bond was the seller but why did Ticketmaster get into the act? I followed their instructions and pressed a box that said: CLICK HERE TO ACCEPT TICKETS…

W.T.F. Instead of moving forward a message advised that I had to close some program that blocked cookies before I could open the tickets. What program and where would I find it? Is it on my IPhone, on my HP laptop or on AOL? Confused and reeling, I called my 17-year-old grandson, Drew. Politely, he asked if I could call him the next day as he was mowing lawns for cash.

“Of course.” I replied. But wait, I then received the following email directly from the Bucs:

You are going to the event(s) below – have a blast. Before you get to the gate…we recommend you pull up your tickets before arriving at the entry gate.

Three different sources of information, StubHub, Ticketmaster and the Bucs. I repeat the obvious; W.T.F! Thoroughly and soundly defeated, I was about to give up when the thought occurred: “Why not check the Bucs app on my IPhone?”

To my surprise and amazement there were four e-tickets on the app each with a QR Code (that box with all those lines and patterns inside.) It seems all’s well that ends well unless I somehow erase the tickets between now and October 1, or even worse, lose my phone.

One final thought: “I’m too old for this s***!”

(All of this happened between 1970 and 1977.)

One hot, steamy Saturday morning found me vacuuming the orange shag-rug that covered our first-floor living room and dining room. Mary Ann had left me alone taking Beth and Michael with her. A fortuitous glance out of our front window revealed my cousin, Bob, exiting his car…a dream come true. At that time, Bob was a Seventies swinging single and it was within the bounds of reason to believe he’d fantasize knocking at a door answered by a bored housewife wearing only her panties and bra. Close but no cigar; In fact, I was the one smoking the cigar and dressed only in a tenement tee shirt and Jockey shorts. I didn’t even give him the chance to ring the bell … I threw open the front door, vacuum cleaner in hand, cigar in the other to exclaim: “What can I do for you good looking?”

Our house at 65-33 77^th Place had been the childhood home of Aunt Helen. Mary Ann and I had moved into a one-bedroom garden apartment in Kew Garden Hills next to Flushing-Meadows Park when we were first married in 1967. Beth was born in 1969 and we soon began outgrowing our apartment. As if by magic, my Aunt Helen arrived in the nick of time offering to rent us the Middle Village house for an astounding amount of $150. Trust me, even in 1970, a monthly rent for a house of only $150 was unheard of!

We moved in February of 1970. My cousin Helen, her husband Don and their family lived four houses away from us in 65-25. In April 1972, they moved to Ramsey, NJ but first sold the place to her brother and his wife, Bill and Del, and their family.

In those early years, we had an active social life with neighbors like Angela and Harold, Vinnie and Lillian, Bob and Connie and Michael and Carol*. Gatherings were mostly house parties but also the occasional church or fraternal order racket. I’m not sure how widely known the term “racket” was outside of Queens but it defined dining and dancing dress-up affairs that included various fund-raising events like 50/50, baskets of cheer, raffles and auctions. We’d take a table of ten. Our tickets included set-ups but it was always BYOB, (Bring Your Own Bottle.)

*Michael and Carol didn’t socialize with us that often. Michael seemed too busy with work and attending NY Knick games. Michael was often late coming home. Two times at Saturday night house parties, he explained ice on the bridge delayed his coming home from Knick games. Of course, this was met with disbelief among the guys especially since he couldn’t tell us the final score. As it turned out, he was full of shit and had a thing going on with a squeeze in his office…goodbye Michael and Carol.

Fred and Huguette arrived from Viet Nam in 1975. They moved into 65-31, a heretofore vacant house next to us. Fred first served in Viet Nam as an army electronics technician while the army was still advisers. After returning home and completing his service he took a job with Decca and returned in country where he met and married Huguette. Fred was a pragmatist with a terrific sense of humor. One Saturday afternoon witnessed the two of us consciously deciding not to prevent an accident. It was one of those Saturdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the Long Island weather gods produce a mild day perfect for installing outdoor Christmas lights. We were both outside, each working on our own displays, when Bill came out lights, ladder and staple gun in hand. Bill erected his ladder, plugged his string in and climbed up to begin fixing it to the house.

“Should we tell him to unplug them first,” Fred asked?

“Naw”, I replied, “Let’s watch the show.”

Bill’s second or third staple hit the wire. Fred and I watched as the spark, shock and sound took him off the ladder and onto the grass. Unhurt but flustered, Bill didn’t appreciate our uncontrolled laugher and our now useless advice to unplug the lights first.

One of our favorite Friday night pass time was stoop sitting around the front walkway leading to the door. Bill and Del, Fred and Huguette and we Delaches lived within five attached houses of each other. We’d leave the widows fronting the street from our kids’ rooms open allowing these organic baby monitors to sound the alert by way of crying if one awoke.

The gals smoked cigarettes, guys cigars; we drank beer or wine and a few exotic drinks, mostly for the ladies like whiskey sours, sloe gin fizz or whatever else was trendy. Eventually, the need for pizza would strike our collective stomachs and a couple of the men would make a pizza run to Tudor Tavern Pizzeria on nearby Eliot Avenue and 80^th Street. The later it was, the better the pizza tasted.

One Friday night, Mary Ann and I joined the stoop-sitting festivities already in progress. We had dined at her mother’s house in Flushing before coming home to put our kids to bed before joining the group. Bill reminded me of a story long lost to me:

“One of my favorite stories, you came over to our front lawn and in short order, Mary Ann announced: ‘John, I have a bone to pick with you.’

“Apparently, while at her mother Dorothy’s house that afternoon. The kids were in the living room and Michael was trying to turn on the TV. Mary Ann and Dorothy were in the kitchen but could hear their conversation. Beth to Michael: ‘You can’t watch that TV, it’s too f***ing dark.’

“Mary Ann told you there was a lull in her conversation with her mother so they both clearly heard what Beth had said. Dorothy feigned being unsure and asked, ‘What did she say.?’

“Mary Ann gave the only reply she could think of, ‘I don’t know.’

“Mary Ann asked if you had an explanation why Beth would have said something like that?

“You thought for a moment and replied: ‘Well, that tv is too f***ing dark.”

Admiral Nimitz made his decision to replace Ghormley with Halsey on October 15, 1942 and Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations, concurred the next day. On October 18, Bull Halsey received this terse order from Nimitz: “You will take command of the South Pacific Area and South Pacific Forces immediately.”

A new buzz of confidence arose as soon as Halsey landed on the island of Noumea, headquarters (HQ) for South Pacific operations. A staff officer painted a sign in two-foot letters repeating Halsey’s mantra: “KILL JAPS, KILL JAPS, KILL MORE JAPS.”

Two weeks later fate brought both sides together. Halsey and his opponent, the brilliant Isoroku Yamamoto, Marshall Admiral of the Imperial Fleet, decided to re-supply their own armies slugging it out on Guadalcanal and hopefully destroy the other’s fleet. Accurate intelligence on both sides put combat plans into motion. Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan on board USS San Francisco and Rear Admiral Norman Scott on board USS Atlanta would lead the American task force into battle. They were destined to die in the upcoming battle. So were all five of the Sullivan boys.

Callaghan, or, as his men fondly referred to him: “Uncle Dan,” would lead the task force bent on stopping the Japanese fleet. Scott’s flagship and two destroyers were absorbed into Callaghan’s task force. The Japanese task force centered around two battleships, Hiei and Kirishima intent on bombarding Henderson Field, the American air base with their big guns. The Japanese were loosely formed as they steamed toward the Americans on the night of November 13^th. Callaghan arranged his ships into a battle line, four destroyers in the van followed by the cruisers, Atlanta, San Francisco, Portland, Helena and Juneau followed by four trailing destroyers.

Cushing, the lead destroyer in his battle line reported first contact with a Japanese destroyer at only 3,000 yards at 0140. Five minutes later the battle was joined. The Japanese concentrated on Atlanta with devastating results. A hit on the bridge killed Admiral Scott and most of his staff as two salvos knocked the light cruiser out of action. Cushing and the destroyer Laffey were also sunk in short order by the battleship Hiei, but other USN tin cans let loose their torpedoes that together with pounding fire from their cruisers killed Hiei.

In the “fog of war,” San Francisco may have mistakenly killed Atlanta and ordered a cease fire that didn’t last long. At this point, the Japanese battlewagon, Kirishima and other ships raked San Francisco, killing Admiral Callaghan.

Samuel Eliot Morison, described what happened on board Juneau, home to the Sullivan brothers:

“Juneau, last cruiser in column, fired along with the rest of the task force during the hectic quarter-hour between 0148 and 0203. In common with other ships, she had difficulty in identifying targets; Callaghan’s Cease Fire order belayed a brief spraying of Helena. An enemy torpedo sundered Juneau’ forward fireroom with a shock which put the ship completely out of action, dead in the water and probably with a broken keel. From that moment her main concern was to clear out and keep afloat.”

Atlanta, Cushing and Monessen succumbed to their wounds that morning. The wounded warriors, San Francisco, Juneau, O’Bannon, Sterett and Fletcher formed up to exit the battle zone. A Japanese submarine, I-26, sighted the cripples and fired a spread of torpedoes. “One enemy torpedo traveled toward Juneau and at 1101 detonated against her port side under the bridge. Horrified sailors in San Francisco saw the light cruiser disintegrate instantaneously and completely, sinking with apparently no trace except a tall pillar of smoke and little debris. Nobody waited to look for survivors.”

A B-17 flying over the scene later that morning spotted about 100 survivors. The crew radioed a message requesting rescue forces. “Unfortunately, this message never got though. Of more than a hundred men who miraculously survived the eruption and who clung pitifully to the flotsam that marked their ship’s end, all but ten perished.”

George, the oldest son, was one of those survivors who didn’t make it. He lasted four days part of it searching for his dead brothers calling out their names before he succumbed to exposure and delirium.

Bull Halsey stayed the course despite this heavy price he continued to send his men and ships into harm’s way over-and-over again until the enemy quit.

Mrs. Sullivan received a personal message from FDR and the dubious distinction of being a five-time Gold Star Mother. She also sponsored the new destroyer USS Sullivans DD-537 at the ships launching in San Francisco on April 4, 1943. The Sullivans participated in both World war 11 and Korea before being decommissioned in 1965. It is now a floating museum on Lake Erie outside Buffalo, New York.

A second USS Sullivans DDG 65 was commissioned in 1997 at Bath Iron Works in Maine and has been in service ever since.

“There is many a boy here who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”

William Tecumseh Sherman  

Thomas Sullivan and his wife, Alleta, raised their family in Waterloo, Iowa. Mr. Sullivan worked for the Illinois Central Railroad as a freight conductor while Mrs. Sullivan kept house and raised their five boys and one girl. George was born in 1914, Francis in 1916, Genevieve, a year and one day later in 1917 (Irish twins?), Joseph in 1918, Madison, (a boy’s name back then) in 1919 and Albert not until 1922. (Perhaps Alleta received a three-year pardon for good behavior?) An eighth girl, Kathleen was born in 1931 but died just five months later.

The five boys were troublemakers with a capital “T” and every one of them dropped out of school in junior high. In keeping with their pack mentality and Tom-foolery, they enlisted together in the Navy after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

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William F. (Bull) Halsey, Jr. was born in 1882, the son of Captain William F. Halsey, Sr. and the former Anne Masters Brewster. Halsey attended private schools and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1904. In 1935, he became a Navy pilot earning his wings at 52 years old so that he could command a carrier group. He was at sea on December 7, 1941 returning to Pearl Harbor on board his carrier flagship, USS Enterprise, after a re-supply mission to Wake Island.

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The Sullivans convinced Naval bureaucrats to assign them to the same ship after completing basic training at the Great Lakes Naval Center. They reported to the USS Juneau, CLAA-52, a brand-new cruiser then being fitted-out at the Federal Shipbuilding Company in Kearney, New Jersey. Juneau, had been built side-by-side with her slightly older sister, USS Atlanta, and the Sullivan boys stood at attention in their dress blues part of the crew of 63 officers and 785 enlisted men as Juneau was commissioned on Valentine’s Day, 1942.

Captain Lyman Swenson sailed his new command down the East Coast and into the Caribbean where its crew, including those five greenhorns from Iowa could drill, drill and drill again until ordered to the southwestern Pacific on August 22, 1942.

Atlanta and Juneau were a new concept in warship design, a multi-purpose platform primarily designed and armed to protect the fleet from attack from the air –  an anti-aircraft cruiser. Their eight, 5-inch twin-turrets, (three forward, three aft and two amid-ships) plus numerous 40mm and 20mm cannons could let loose a magnitude of deadly steel to kill or deter the most determined attacker. Both ships performed as expected shooting down numerous Japanese aircraft during several battles off Guadalcanal.

Unfortunately, these lightly-armored steeds, built for speed and air defense, were poorly designed to withstand the big guns of the Imperial Navy’s cruisers or the revolutionary, monster, oxygen-fed torpedoes carried by their destroyers and submarines.

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Marines successfully landed on Guadalcanal and Tulagi on August 7, 1942 establishing secure beach-heads and pushing inland seizing a Japanese airstrip soon to re-christened, Henderson Field…So far, so good.

The Japanese reacted with all hell two nights later. Admiral Gunichi Mikawa ordered his task force to destroy the landing fleet. Standing in his way off Savo Island, Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley had positioned two cruiser squadrons, one, north and one to the south of the island. Mikawa took the southern route the one closest to Guadalcanal sinking the USS Astoria, USS Quincy, USS Vincennes and the HMAS Canberra. Mikawa inflicted the greatest loss of men and ships America ever suffered in a battle at sea. But Mikawa blinked. He didn’t continue forward to sink the supply ships; he returned home. Hindsight sucks, but that moment was the best shot the Japanese had to reverse what was almost impossible to reverse…Japan was finished.

The next six months witnessed a war of attrition, a terrible struggle. Each side would go on to lost a total of 24 ships and thousands of young lives. The difference was America had undertaken an enormous building program and every carrier, cruiser and destroyer lost would be replaced with five to ten new ships in less than a year. The Japanese didn’t have the same luxury enjoyed by the Arsenal for Democracy.

But that was all in the future. After Savo, circumstances became desperate and it became clear to Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, that Ghormley wasn’t capable of carrying on. Halsey understood that the battles had to be fought with the “navy you have to fight with” and he was pragmatic enough to understand he had to send his officers, men and their ships into harm’s way for as long as it remained necessary.

(To be continued)

The Long Island Railroad has long distrusted its most faithful riders, those commuters who regularly purchase monthly tickets. Granted, the LIRR deeply discounts these fares in the hope of attracting more and more patrons, but the railroad also fears that these “loyal riders” will misuse and subvert their discounted tickets. For many years ticket collectors had to punch most tickets four times a day, twice in the morning on the ride to the New York Pennsylvania Station and twice on the evening commute. Collectors punched tickets before and after the junction in Jamaica, Queens where all branches save the Port Washington Line meet.

The only discernible rationales for a double punch were either; A. to make sure passengers who changed trains at Jamaica had a valid ticket for both trains or, B. to prevent ticket takers from going to sleep after first punching the tickets. Thankfully, this practice ended in the early 1980s. Passengers only showed their monthly on each ride and ticket takers randomly punch them two or three times a month to prevent counterfeiting.

Today, the introduction of electronic tickets is changing the game, yet the acceptance of monthly paperless tickets is yet to catch on.

Since recorded time, or at least as far back as 1924, (the earliest monthly ticket I could find on eBay,) the collector dutifully has taken the new ticket in hand at the beginning of each month, looked  at the commuter and punched the “M” or “F” box to denote the commuter’s sex. This custom established a rite-of-passage especially relevant during the male dominated Twentieth Century commuter scene. Most of these male commuters seldom ventured into Manhattan on the weekend and it was not unusual for their teenage daughters to borrow daddy’s ticket for a Saturday night adventure in the Big Apple.

Most collectors accepted the borrowed monthlies without fuss or bother but invariably the chap who was having a bad day or simply was a prick refused to honor the ticket. Such callous action could initiate a drama proportionate to the lass’ hurt feelings or her funds on hand to buy a one-way ticket. My own daughter, Beth, and even my wife, Mary Ann, encountered such harassment at least on one occasion.

I actually suffered a case of mistaken gender identity myself. One month, a ticket-taker hastily punched the wrong letter on my monthly. I didn’t notice until one of his brothers chose to take issue with me. The fool challenged me even though I had signed the ticket on the front and printed my name and phone number on the back. My response to his: “What’s going on here, bub?” was a sharp, “Well, it looks to me like one of your dumb-ass buddies decided I needed a sex-change.”

My sharp words, no-nonsense tone, and the look in my eyes sent him reeling. He took the only course of action left; he punched the “M” marking me bi-gendered for the remainder of the month.

Now at long last, the LIRR’s gender fixation has finally hit a wall, one of those Twenty-First problems we are forced to address, the rights of transsexual and transgendered people. Newsday recently reported that a public advocate, Letita James, has put the railroad’s parent, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (MTA,) on notice that, “The railroad’s gender policy, ‘violates the spirit, if not the letter’ of state and city laws meant to protect human rights.”

“This unnecessary antiquated and reductive system poses serious constraints on a range of groups including those whose dress or appearance is gender-nonconforming and anyone who doesn’t feel their gender is relevant to riding public transit.”

(After reading my new book on writing clearly, I am sorely tempted to edit that statement so that she speaks clearly.)

But it is a quotation and, so be it.  Me thinks Ms. James is asking the LIRR’s to stop identifying passengers by their gender and let’s go with that.

So I say: Bully for you, Letita! Enough is enough. With all of their other problems, both the MTA and the LIRR should cave on this issue. Pennsylvania Station is falling down, the four East River tubes damaged by Sandy must be repaired sooner or later and emergency repairs at Penn Station this summer will likely cause mini-nightmares.

That’s not all, folks. The signal system at the LIRR’s Jamaica hub is on death’s doorstep and the LIRR has two insanely expensive capital improvement projects under way. The first, Eastside Access, is the road’s perpetual project to shift a good number of its trains from Penn Station to a new terminal under Grand Central Terminal. This boondoggle devours money like Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” yet has an opening date that continues to slip-slide away. That opening, once projected for 2012, now hovers at 2022 but don’t bet the ranch on it opening that year either.

Add to that the LIRR a multi-billion-dollar project to build a vital third track along the main line from Jamaica to Hicksville. Still in the early stages of design and funding, it seems likely to inherit a life of its own and cost escalation without end.

The time has come to say adios to M/F feature on monthly tickets. Why fight a fight you can’t win especially when it’s un-necessary and dumb? Let people free to be who they want to be and, for God’s sake, make the trains run on time.

My cousin, Bill put me on to “Do I Make Myself Clear? Why Writing Well Matters” by Harold Evans. I recommend this gem of a book to anyone who wants to improve their writing skills.

Mr. Evans catalogues a list of clichés writers should avoid. These include acid test, breathless silence, crack troops, dig in their heels, given the green light, heartfelt thanks, in the nick of time, long arm of the law, never a dull moment, part and parcel, red faces, stick out like a sore thumb, true colors, up in arms and widespread anxiety. Directly following this list, He takes a time out that he calls “Interlude.” It contains the following passage Evans attributes to the late Bernard Levin:

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare “Its Greek to me,” then you are

quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting

Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in

sorrow than in anger; if your wish is father to the thought; if your lost property has

vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an

inch or suffered from green-eyed  jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have

been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your

brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted  on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on

ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and  master), laughed yourself into stiches, had

short shift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing,  if you have seen better days or lived

in a fool’s paradise – why, be that as it may, the more fool  you, for it is but a forgone

conclusion that you are (as luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare;  if you think it is early

days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that’s the long and

short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it  involves your

own flesh and blood, if you lie low to the crack of doom because you support foul  play, if

you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then – to

 give the devil his due – if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head)

you  are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if

you wish I was dead as doornail, if you think that I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the

devil incarnate, a stone-hearted villain, bloody minded or a blinking idiot, then – by Jove!

Oh Lord! Tut tut!  For goodness’ sake! What the dickens! But me no butts! – It is all one to

me, for you are quoting  Shakespeare.