Maine Maritime Academy

My Roommate Ken Talyor and I at Naval Flight School and Destroyer life June 69-72. After graduation, we both went to sea( he with MEBA and me with Texaco) until March 1969 when we both received orders to active duty by volunteering for Naval Flight School at Pensacola. Flight School was a back door to active duty since at that time it was hard for a reserve officer to get orders to active duty with a merchant marine license unless you volunteered for something. I went to Pensacola first in March and started flying. Ken came down later in June after attending my wedding in NJ and drove my new wife’s car to Florida loaded with our wedding gifts. After reporting in, the normal process of transition to student aviator was skewed for Ken due to the staging needs of the pilot pipeline. With his marine engineering background, Ken was diverted to the base power plant as an officer in the power generation division. By the end of December, we both received orders to Destroyers; he to DD “?? (forgot the name) in San Diego as Main Propulsion Assistant that was getting ready to deploy to the gun line in Viet Nam. Ken eventually fleeted up to Ch Eng before the deployment was over. My Orders were to the Forest Sherman DD931 homeported in Newport RI as Antisubmarine Warfare Officer (ASWO) which was also preparing to deploy to West Pac, however, by the time I completed ASWO school in Key West the ship’s orders were changed from West Pac to a North Atlantic NATO antisubmarine Cold War exercise above the Arctic Circle chasing Russians. We both were discharged about the same time as Lieutenants and returned to merchant marine roots, Ken to Gulf Oil and I to Texaco. Ken eventually married and moved to Portland Oregon working as a marine surveyor until he passed away in 1983. Our friendship began in 1964 and lasted 20 years. RIP Ken. You are not forgotten.