Author Archives: Dave

The Transmitter

John Bowker, Jr. working with a student on the second radion station he built at Tennessee State University in 1971

John Bowker, Jr. working with a student at the second radio station he built at Tennessee State University in 1971

Right after my first visit to the WRMC studios I went back to my room in Painter Hall to tune the station in. There it was— a little scratchy but clear— coming out of my little AM radio. This was a true wonder, I thought, to hear the sound of a radio station I just visited in person and to hear the voice of an announcer I met less than an hour before. Some evenings when I wasn’t at the studio running the controls, I’d tune the station in from my dorm, but the signal would be very scratchy and sometime even unintelligible. How could this be, I wondered, for a radio station with studios less than three hundred yards away?

It turned out that students in other dorms were having the same problems. We had many discussions with our chief engineer, the upperclassman I’m calling Marty. To start with, he said, the FCC limits college stations to very low power to avoid interfering with other stations, particularly at night. Using the underground class bell wiring as an antenna was intended, in part, to limit our signal to the dorms and classroom buildings right on campus.

The station had first gone on the air in May 1949, broadcasting from a chicken coop, or so we believed, in the backyard of John G. Bowker, a professor of mathematics who lived in a small house adjacent to the campus. Bowker’s son, John D. Bowker, was the student who built the first transmitter which was connected to some kind of antenna. Young Bowker was an amateur radio operator who went on to a brilliant career as a broadcast engineer with RCA. He could not have been responsible when another student connected the transmitter output to a chain link fence to improve the coverage of the station. It worked, but the signal escaped the bounds of the campus, reaching a radius of ten miles around the Town of Middlebury and leading the FCC to suspend WRMC’s broadcast license, all according to a history of the station written by Don Kreis in 1981.

A vintage radio circuit that resembled WRMC’s original transmitter

Some knowledge of this background figured into our discussions of the coverage problem we had in the fall of 1957, but we didn’t know details because the founders of the station had long since graduated. We didn’t even know if the dust covered transmitter with glowing tubes in the back room next to the teletype machine was the original one built by John Bowker, or something concocted by a successor.

Marty told us that replacing the transmitter would go long way toward improving our signal, but that the other part of the problem, the underground bell-system wiring that we used as an antenna, was beyond our control. That part of the system was the domain of the college’s Department of Buildings and Grounds (B & G) which we, in our student paranoia, believed to be an enemy of WRMC, not through deliberate intent, mind you, but from gross, overwhelming incompetence. B & G’s director, we believed, was a product of the Brandon Training School, just south of Middlebury, which used to be called the “Brandon School for the Feeble Minded.” This name fit the man in charge of B & G perfectly, or so we thought. He was, in our opinion, a true moron who allowed his crews to cut the underground bell system wiring whenever and wherever they felt like it, without the slightest regard for our precious radio signal. Of course we knew nothing of the B & G director’s actual qualifications— that he held an engineering degree and that he was licensed by the State of Vermont as a Professional Engineer.

Not only did our silly paranoia prevent us from approaching this man who could have helped us, I’m sure, but it also blocked our approach to Professor Bowker who could have arranged for his son at RCA to consult with us, or to Ben Wissler, the Professor of Physics who could have supplied expert technical advice. Instead we decided to build a new more powerful transmitter which Marty would design and that he and I would build.

The best electronic supplier for our needs, Marty told me, was located in Springfield, Mass, a two hour’s drive west of Boston and about four hours south of Middlebury. The plan called for us to return early from spring break, stopping on our way in Springfield to pick up the electronic parts, and then driving in Marty’s station wagon on up to Middlebury. This we did in April, 1958 after informing the college that we’d need our dorm rooms for a few days before the rest of the students returned for the resumption of classes..

The new transmitter was to be housed in a large standing steel cabinet, about two-thirds the size of a telephone booth, that we assembled in WRMC’s back room under the Student Union. Called a relay rack from its origins in the telephone industry, this cabinet would accommodate standard-sized panels, shelves and even a back door. Parts of the new transmitter would rest on shelves at various levels, beginning with the power supply on the bottom.

A relay rack similar to the one we used to build WRMC's new transmiiter

A relay rack like the one we used to build WRMC’s new transmitter.

Marty introduced me to the basics of electronic construction which began with punching appropriate sized holes in blank aluminum chassis for radio-tube sockets and a host of other components. There were lots of holes to drill, wires to strip to remove insulation, and numerous connections to solder. As we progressed he showed me the proper technique for each of these operations. After a couple of days we had the power supply built and had installed red indicator lights and meters on the front panel. Classes resumed soon after the power supply was completed. With our divergent schedules Marty and I couldn’t work together any more. Marty, with electronic knowledge far superior to mine, had to finish construction of the new transmitter on his own. In the meantime WRMC was off the air.

Considering my terrible mid-term grades I was determined to put more effort into my classes, which I did, at least for a while. I missed the debut of the new transmitter, but turned on the radio in my dorm room the next day to check the new signal. WRMC’s spot on the dial was dead silent. I ran down to the studios to find a group of glum-faced staffers: everything had gone fine at first, but in early morning of the second day, a coffee shop employee had noticed smoke seeping out from under the door of WRMC’s transmitter room. A college electrician investigated and traced the source to our new transmitter which he unplugged. I don’t know what went wrong with the circuits that Marty and I had built but the college wouldn’t allow us to repair it. We had to go back to the old machine.

Next week: WRMC Revived

WRMC

Mark Skolnik student at the control board

When I arrived at Middlebury College in Vermont in the fall of 1957 at age 18, I was planning to become an engineer, transferring — with good physics, chemistry and math grades — to MIT after my junior year. I had done well in these topics in high school, and I had always enjoyed fiddling with radios and simple electronics. After a few weeks at Middlebury I went into the basement of the Student Union building to check out the college radio station, WRMC. I could learn more about electronics, I thought, if they would take me on as a volunteer to do technical work. An upperclassman showed me around. In the control room were two large turntables built into a bench on either side of a sloping panel with a lighted meter and six black knobs with a bunch of lever switches. Large windows on either side of the control room allowed the engineer to see into the studios on the left and right. “Marty” (a pseudonym) is our chief engineer,” the upperclassman said, “He’ll be back later this afternoon and can answer your questions about the electronics.”

Marty was from Maine and worked with large mainframe computers for the local gas company during the summer, he told me when we met. He led me out of the studio, past storage cages with provisions for the Student Union coffee shop upstairs to a small back room which contained a teletype machine fed by United Press International. “American Tobacco pays for the UP teletype at many college stations like WRMC” he said. “All we have to do is air so many Lucky Strike commercials a day. They’re on those transcription disks.” He pointed to a stack of sixteen-inch records in sturdy manila sleeves leaning against the wall near the teletype. These records, I could see, would fit on the Gates turntables I had seen in the control room, but were too big for home phonographs.

In an alcove behind the teletype was a large home-built electronic chassis with glowing tubes and wires sitting on a shelf. It hadn’t been dusted in a long time. “That’s the transmitter,” Marty said. “It feeds into the old class-bell wiring underground that goes to all the buildings and dorms. They don’t use the bells anymore so we use the wires as an antenna.”

The next day I came back to learn how use the equipment in the control room. Jim Tracy, a sophomore, showed me how to cue records and operate the switches and knobs while always watching the VU meter to keep the needle out of the red “distortion” zone. Later that day I met another sophomore who had a country and western show and who was willing to let me do the engineering for him. After a few weeks I was comfortable in the control room and asked if I might do some announcing too; I thought that it might help with my stuttering.

They let me start with the news, reading selected items from the UP wire. I did fine without stammering. You had to edit your copy beforehand, they said, because sometimes there were typos and other errors in the teletype feed. When Pope Pius XII died on October 9, 1958, the first UP bulletin read “POOP DEAD.” I went on to read other material and served as News Director for awhile. My main responsibility was to keep the teletype supplied with fresh ribbons and a full paper roll. God forbid the paper should run out in the middle of an important story overnight. It happened once and I got into big trouble.

Eventually I hosted my own classical music show. It was very easy to run the entire station from the control room, announcing, cueing up records and manipulating the knobs and switches on the control board. You didn’t need a separate engineer and announcer if the show wasn’t too complicated to produce.

Ed Rothchild and Pete Frame cover a ball game with the successor to the BBB

WRMC covered Middlebury College sports by sending one or two reporters to the home and away games. We leased a special line from the telephone company for each game we covered, and carried a homemade portable console to connect the microphone to the phone line in the press box. This black box was called “Baker’s Battery Bastard,” or the BBB after the former student who constructed it.

Peter Talbot was one of the juniors who were most active at the station when I was a freshmen. We envied him, because he had a summer job working on a real radio station in Connecticut. He also had a great bass voice that projected well on the air. One day he showed us a trick with which an announcer could recreate the play-by-play for a baseball game from a properly kept score card and a recording of crowd noises. One person could create the illusion alone in the studio and the listener would believe that the man on the radio was actually at the ball game:

It’s a bouncing grounder. And, OOOOOh, it’s by the shortstop on one hop. Johnson charges for third…[crowd noise up]… The throw from center. Not in time! Heeee’s safe!!!…[more crowd noise]…

The deception depended on the listeners not knowing exactly when the game was played, and, of course, on a ready willingness to suspend skepticism every time they turned the radio on.

Next week: The transmitter

Troop 3 Reunion

Dave Eckhardt and Bob Baum at the 2004 Troop 3 reunion. Photo by Pic Harrison

It must have been at my 40^th Marblehead High School in reunion in 1997 that some of us spoke of Dave Eckhardt, the scoutmaster we hadn’t seen since the mid 1950s. Someone, maybe Tom Hansen, remembered that he had moved to Chicago, and on a visit there had tried to look him up with no success. Someone else remembered hearing something about Dave living in Virginia and had tried to find him, again without result. The mystery of Dave Eckhardt rattled around in the back of my mind for a couple of years and I couldn’t let go of it. After all, I had played a role connecting him with Troop 3 in the first place. He had turned up as a border in the summer of 1951 in the house where we rented rooms at 18 Pearl Street when I was twelve. I mentioned that I was Boy Scout in Troop 3, and Dave, then age twenty-one, had jumped at the opportunity to get involved. Fifty years later, in April 2001, I undertook an internet search and found a David C. Eckhardt in Virginia Beach, VA. I sent off a letter and received an email from him several days later. That evening we spoke on the phone for an hour.

Dave had four grown children and two grandchildren. What brought him to Marblehead in 1951 was a job with Sylvania in transistor research following his graduation from Carnegie-Mellon University. His young single co-workers, he told me, spent their evenings in bars, but he wanted to do something useful with his spare time — his explanation for his non-stop dedication to our Boy Scout troop. He had discovered after his three and half years in Marblehead that he was better suited for sales than for research and had switched from Sylvania to IBM where he had worked mostly in Chicago. After IBM he moved to Virginia and began a real estate business. At seventy-one he managed an agency full time that dealt in condo time-shares. He added that he had raised his children through their teenage years as a single parent. I couldn’t think of anyone better prepared for single parenting than Dave Eckhardt after his experience with us.

At our forty-fifth high school reunion in 2002, I suggested to Hopper Cutler and Tom Hansen that we might do a Boy Scout reunion and bring Dave back to Marblehead for a visit. They agreed. After returning to St. Louis I dug into the job of locating as many alums as I could. I did a lot of this research using my internet connection at work during slack periods which my employer didn’t seem to mind. We had weathered the millennium bug thanks to intense preparation, and my job had become a lot easier. I started with a few addresses and sent letters and then emails. Everyone I contacted helped to locate others. The Yankee Clipper Boy Scout Council dug up old troop rosters from Marblehead going back into the 1930s and sent me copies. Of the 41 alums I found 22 were willing to come on the date we had set: May 22, 2004. At the Marblehead end, Hooper arranged for us to use the Masonic Hall on Pleasant Street and located a caterer who did a marvelous job with fried shrimp at low cost. Buck Grader volunteered the Landing Restaurant for a Saturday morning gathering and arranged lodging for Dave Eckhardt at the Boston Yacht Club.

Hooper hams it up, again. Photo by Pic Harrison

Barb and I drove east from St. Louis and stayed at the Harborside House B&B on Gregory Street. Eckhardt, it developed, was flying in from China, and had missed a connection which would delay his arrival at Logan Airport until late Friday night, May 21. Hooper picked me up at the B&B and we drove into Logan to collect our prize. Dave seemed refreshed after three sleepless days on airplanes. Except for white hair, he looked just he had in 1954. We drove him back to the Boston Yacht Club where Buck Grader was waiting; it must have been well past midnight.

The reunion was well chronicled in The Marblehead Reporter by Dawn Bucket, George Derringer and Hooper and Joan Cutler. “Pic” Harrison supplied great photos. Here, in part, is what Hooper and Joan wrote:

Mr. Eckhardt (Dave) spoke of his gratitude being sought out after so many years, what these “kids” had meant to him, done for him, given back to him – not the other way around. A devout Christian, he told of his travels to Thailand living with a peace-loving gentle Buddhist family; or before yet another adventure, reading the Koran to better understand the Muslim family he would visit. …He shared his most recent journey: visiting a … Chinese English teacher. When asked to teach the class a song and poem, all he could think of was “John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt” and “Peter Piper Picked, etc.” Then Dave encouraged all present (former Scouts, families and friends) to look at life as an adventure and recognize that just Marblehead or just Virginia Beach isn’t our world anymore. He enjoined all to open themselves, to embrace, to learn what the world is and what it will be. With his four children grown and twin granddaughters recently born, he continues to live by own words, embracing life, sharing himself with them and others just as he did 50 years ago. Lucky Troop 3.

Dave Eckhardt at 79 in his office in Virginia Beach

Dave Eckhardt at 79 at his office in Virginia Beach

“Pic” Harrison shared another perspective:

In concluding his remarks, Dave Eckhardt said that, “life was a continuing journey and that we all had much to look forward to.” After the applause Hooper Cutler, a third organizer of the event said, “Dave, why didn’t you tell us this fifty years ago!” For just a brief time while Dave was talking he was our leader once again, and we were the boys.

Next week: WRMC at Middlebury College

Crawford’s Notch

Crawford Notch general store today

“They ought to call it ‘Nawford’s Crotch.’” It was Hooper Cutler, seated with me in the back of Dave Eckhardt’s 1941 Buick limousine, just offering his latest witticism as we wound along US Route 302 just a mile short of our destination in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was 1953 and we were fourteen. Dave, our scoutmaster, was at the wheel. “Alright, that’s enough,” he said, as he turned his head a bit. He had already put up with more adolescent gross-out humor than any mature adult should have to endure. But then, in our eyes, Eckhardt wasn’t a mature adult. To start with, he was only a few years older than we were, and not only that, he had shared with us more than a few gross-out jokes and anecdotes of his own. Maybe he regretted these un-scoutmasterly lapses when he realized that once you turn on the spigot of juvenile vulgarity, there’s no shutting it off.

We pulled into the parking lot at Crawford Notch State Park and went into the general store where our scoutmaster checked our camping reservation with the proprietor. We had a special spot, not an official campsite, right along the Saco River and behind a yard where the highway department stored sand for the icy roads in the winter.

Inside the gift shop we read the plaque relating the sad story of the Willey family which had been killed in August 1826 by a landslide when they ran from their house to a cave they had prepared as a shelter. The house itself was spared when a rock ledge caused the landslide to divide into two streams passing on either side. News of the Willey’s fate, the plaque said, had inspired poets and writers including Nathaniel Hawthorne to commemorate the tragedy.

We pitched our tents, cooked our supper and went to sleep to be ready for the next day’s adventures. On some of our trips we hiked the trails within the park, climbed Mount Willey or visited nearby Arethusa Falls, at two-hundred feet, the highest in New Hampshire. Once, I slipped on the wet ledge at the top of the falls, and slid a dozen feet towards the edge before catching myself on a protruding rock. On one weekend we ascended Mount Madison to its desolate smooth rocky summit and another we climbed Mount Washington, the highest in the Presidential Range.

The summit of Mt. Madison in sight. Photo by Dave at 14.

We were hiking up a sloping trail when I heard Hooper, behind me, singing some coarse words to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw.” It seemed so funny to us that we had to sing it for our scoutmaster and we did, once or twice. But on our third try, he said “No, that’s enough! I don’t want to hear that damn song again.”

Then, on another hike, we tried singing just the first few words, “Do your …,” just to test his reaction. He froze on the trail, and ordered us again to stop singing. Not to be outdone, one of us came up with sanitized lyrics:

Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro?

Can you tie ‘em in a knot, can you tie ‘em in a bow?

Can you sling ‘em over your shoulder like a continental soldier?

Do your ears hang low?

Yes my ears hang low, and they wobble to and fro, etc, etc.

No, No, No! Not even with clean words! Never, Never again!” We were silenced, but I never forgot the song.

Our regular camping trips to Crawford Notch ended when Dave Eckhardt was drafted into the Army. Another scoutmaster took over Troop 3 and I went into the Sea Scouts. A couple of years later when I was seventeen I suggested to two of my fellow scouts that we visit to our campsite in the White Mountains. Dave Eckhardt couldn’t join us; he was out of the Army, but had been transferred to Chicago. One of the scouts, Paul Meo, was able to use his parent’s 1955 Chevrolet Station wagon, so Billy Doane, Paul and I piled in and headed up to Crawford’s Notch. On the way, we stopped at the American Legion Hall in Marblehead to pick up some of our troop’s camping gear that included a set of nested cooking pots.

Hooper hams it up at Crawford’s Notch. Photo by Dave at 14.

We checked in at the Crawford Notch general store, got permission to camp at our special spot and set up camp. I had my Army surplus jungle hammock which I strung between two trees; Billy and Paul intended to spend the night out in sleeping bags. We explored the state park a bit, returned to the campsite and cooked our supper. We scoured the pots and pans with sand from the Saco riverbed and set them aside to dry. I climbed into my hammock while Paul and Billy stretched out on the ground. Within an hour it began to rain, hard. I looked out to see Paul and Billy with flashlights retreating into the back of Paul’s station wagon. I remained dry and comfortable with the sound of the rain beating on the top of my enclosed hammock. After another hour I went to sleep. I woke in the gray dawn and looked out. The rain had ended but the Saco River had overflown its banks in the night, washing away the pots and pans and other gear that belonged, not to us, but to Troop 3. The river bank was a foot or two from Paul’s station wagon but not quite up to my hammock. I stepped out onto soggy ground. We stuffed the remainder of our wet equipment into the station wagon and headed back to Marblehead stopping for breakfast at a diner on the road.

Hooper Cutler, Paul Meo and I now are in our mid seventies;Billy Doane died a few years ago. Dave Eckhardt lives in Virginia and shares a birthday with me. In December, on the day I turn 75, Dave will be 84. We will exchange greetings and best wishes, as usual.

Two weeks from today: A Scout Reunion

Sea Scouts

Marblehead Sea Scout in their whaleboat off Fort Sewell. from Hartley Alley's " A Gentleman from Indiana Looks at Marblehead" 1963

Marblehead Sea Scouts in their whaleboat off Fort Sewell. From Hartley Alley’s “A Gentleman from Indiana Looks at Marblehead” Bond Wheelwright Company, Freeport, Maine1963

I remained with Boy Scout Troop 3 in Marblehead until 1954 when I was 15, around the time that our scoutmaster, Dave Eckhardt, was drafted into the Army. Many of us knew of the illustrious Sea Scout Ship Marblehead, which had prospered in the 1930s, winning the National Flagship Award and appearing in a Life Magazine feature in 1940. All of those boys and their leaders went into the military in World War II and after the war the Ship was revived but dissolved a few years before I became eligible to join.

A number of us in Troop 3 lobbied our parents and sponsors at the American Legion to revive the Sea Scout Ship again. An adult committee, which included my father, met with Legion and Scout officials who agreed to re-charter the Ship to begin meeting in the fall of 1954. Our new Skipper was to be Don Sweet, who had been a member of the 1930s group and who had served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.

When we met, Don told us to scrounge surplus navy uniforms, both wool winter blues and cotton summer whites. My mother knew a man about my size who had served in the Navy. She drove me over to his house in Beverly where he handed over his old uniforms with the sailors’ bell-bottomed pants. We stopped at Almy’s in Salem for the Sea Scout patches which she sewed on the next day.

Each week we gathered in uniform at the American Legion Hall. Our skipper directed us to lay out the room like the deck of a ship with wooden stanchions connected by ropes representing the rail. He taught us the proper naval protocol for boarding a ship, including proper salutes and piping officers aboard with a Bosun’s pipe.

We needed a whaleboat which one of our leaders located in Georgetown. We drove about twenty miles one evening in his pickup truck with a trailer hitch to bring it back to Marblehead. The boat was a little over twenty-six feet in length with four benches, or thwarts, accommodating eight oarsmen. A coxswain at the stern used a steering oar to direct the boat while an officer sat at the bow.

The American Legion did not allow us to use the “Beachcomber” cottage across from Fort Sewell Beach that the earlier groups has used as headquarters. But they did let us store and maintain our whaleboat right behind the cottage where we could launch it easily at high tide into Little Harbor. We fixed it up, launched it and set out to practice our rowing skills with our skipper’s son Don Sweet, Jr. serving as coxswain. After several weekend trips around Marblehead Harbor we learned to handle the boat well and were prepared for a big event coming up in June.

Sea Scouts Dick Bridgeo and Walter Bartlett on the porch of the Beachcomber Cottage. from Life Magazine, August 5, 1940

Several Sea Scout Ships from the North Shore of Boston held an annual regatta at Stage Fort Park in Gloucester timed to coincide with the festival of St. Peter, the patron saint of fishermen. A naval vessel, a cruiser, made a courtesy visit for the festival and some of the Scouts rowed out in their whaleboats for a tour of the ship.

To reach Gloucester from Marblehead we rowed about fifteen miles across Massachusetts Bay taking maybe two hours with a light wind and favorable currents. Don Sweet, Jr. steered from his coxswain’s perch at the stern while Don, Sr., our skipper, directed from the bow. We wore casual clothes, saving our summer whites for formations and for a night on the town in Gloucester. We carried our clothes in sea bags in the whaleboat with us while my father and some others brought the rest of our gear to Gloucester by car.

We were pitching our tents in the park when I heard a scream behind me. I turned to see Don Sweet, Jr. running in circles having hit his hand with the back of an axe while pounding in a tent peg. My father tackled him, bringing him to the ground and held his bleeding hand steady. Don Sr. arrived on the run and bundled his hysterical son into a car for the short drive to Cape Ann hospital. They returned to the campsite a couple of hours later with the younger Don sporting a fat bandage on his left hand. I hadn’t expected my father to act so quickly. I was proud of him for his decisive action in an emergency.

That evening we donned our whites and walked towards the Gloucester fish piers to enjoy the carnival set up to celebrate the Feast of St. Peter. The crew of the naval vessel visiting Gloucester had shore liberty and wore summer whites just like ours, except for the Sea Scout patches. A small group of us, Dave Fleming, Paul Meo, Charlie Pike, “Pic” Harrison and I, stopped at a booth selling ridiculous joke hats. Paul Meo and others dared me to buy a very wide, floppy beret: yellow with blue and pink polka-dots. I bought it stowing my white sailor’s cap into a pocket and putting the silly hat on my head. We stuffed ourselves with hot dogs and other snacks and decided after a while to walk back to our camp site in the park.

We had almost reached the Gloucester Fishermen’s Monument on Western Avenue when a jeep manned by sailors with Shore Patrol arm bands stopped beside us. “Come over here!” the driver barked at me. “You’re out of uniform!” I realized right away that the Shore Patrolmen had mistaken us for sailors from the cruiser, and that if I didn’t produce my Sea Scout card quickly I’d be on my way to the brig. I snatched the polka-dotted beret off my head and fumbled for my wallet. The man looked at my card and said OK before driving off.

The next morning, a Sunday, we Catholics attended Mass, celebrated by a priest in full vestments in front of a tent in the park. Two Gloucester Sea Scouts served as altar boys. Afterwards we competed in a whaleboat race, coming in second despite an exhausting effort at the oars.

Our fathers returned with their cars to pick up our gear. We broke camp, and started the long row back to Marblehead Harbor. The current which had favored us on the trip to Gloucester now opposed us and the rowing got very hard. We put our backs into it but the water towers and other landmarks on shore barely moved in relation to us. After an hour and half we hadn’t yet completed a third of our journey. A friendly man in a powerboat pulled alongside. “Want a tow?” he asked. We tossed him a line and relaxed all the way back to the dock in Marblehead.

The Beachcomber Dory Club, occupants of the building before the Sea Scout took over. From the Peach Collection

Beyond the camping expedition, our skipper and his associates taught us numerous nautical skills and took us on expeditions which included a visit to an aircraft carrier, a weekend at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, and a short cruise on a destroyer. These Sea Scout adventures were the high points of my late adolescence, but I gave little credit to our leaders for arranging them. As kids we had no idea what it took to set these plans into motion.

Years later I read that Don Sweet Jr., had died in Florida in 1995 at age 55 and that Don, Sr. died in August 2001 at 85. My mother kept the polka-dotted beret from the St. Peter’s festival in Gloucester at our home in Marblehead until it disintegrated.

Next week: Crawford’s Notch

Adventures in Marblehead

Adventures in Marblehead, St. Louis, and Stops In Between with Dave Crowley