Playing Fair and Being Kind

John McCain’s best friend in the Navy was Admiral Charles Robert Larson. The Admiral passed away about 4 years ago. McCain was buied today next to him on the Naval Academy Grounds. They arranged this many years ago. Like I said, they were best of friends.

I was the Engineering Officer on the deep submersible Sea Cliff in 1976-79 period. Charles Larson, then Commodore of Submarine Developement Group One in San Diego arrived at his duty station about the same time I arrived on board Sea Cliff. SubdDevGruOne was the central command for all deep submersible activities.
Sea Cliff was ordered to travel from San Diego to Kauai to do some repair dives on a sonar array. The array was on a slope of ground as deep as two thousand feet. We had to coordinate our repairs between visits from combat submarines to the array. Each visit lasted about an hour. When the submarine showed up for it’s planned visit we had to be clear of the array so as to not interfere with the operation.
Between nasty weather conditions on the surface daily and the traffic using the sonar array we made very few dives in the few months we were on Kauai. Some days we would travel the length of the island from Nawiliwili Bay to the western end of the island to only be turned back by the rising seas. After a while we would wait in Nawiliwili, near Lihue and get accurate weather conditions at the western end of Kauai. In all I think we made three dives in two months. We left the island paradise and sailed back to San Diego on the Maxine D.

The Maxine D. is what is known as a “mud boat”. It is a hundred feet long and draws a little over ten feet. It’s flat bottomed and pretty stable in a sea when loaded. We ran into heavy weather off the coast of California upon our return and the wave heights were close to twenty five feet.
On the way into the harbor we picked up Commodore Chuck Larson. He wanted to greet us and ride in on the Maxine D. We arrived in port and tied up to the pier on North Island Naval Air Station after dark. The wives of the married guys were waiting on the pier, shouting their “Hi, Honeys” and “I missed yous”. At the time I was a single-john so I stood by the rail on the upper deck forward catching all of the drama on the pier. I only lived less than a mile away in Coronado and my car was parked near where we berthed. I was enjoying the word play, as I said.
I saw Leslie Jensen on the pier. She was married to Art Jensen, a real gentle Electician’s Mate and with her was Becky Long, wife to Biff Long our Sonarman. Leslie spied me and began to make her customary smart-alek comments she would save up for me. We traded a few mock insults and barbs and then she yelled, “Hey, George! Who came to see you??” That smarted a little but I didn’t let on. Being at the party with no date stung a little. I was stuck for words at the moment. To my right about five feet removed a voice called out, “I DID!!” The commodore was up to the task. Leslie shut up because he was obvious in his uniform and stripes. Well, she did manage a “Hey! Good to see you, George!”
For a few minutes future Admiral Larson was my best friend too.

G. M. Goodwin
September 2, 2018