This past weekend, Sweetie and I took our trusty F-150 down I-10 to San Antonio. Yep, one more time and only a couple of weeks since our last visit.
This trip all started just about 6 weeks ago. We both received letters from the Lone Start Chapter of the Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association (NCVA)* about their upcoming 2011 reunion. Hooo, buddy! That should be a fun trip so we signed up to attend the reunion.
Sure enough, there were shipmates who joined the Navy in the 1940's and some who retired in 2000 and a whole bunch in between. The CTR bunch (Collection) seemed to out-number the rest of us but there was a good sprinkling of CTT (Technical) and CTO (Operator) folks there. And there happened to be only two CTM (Maintenance) in attendance. I didn't seem to run across any CTA (Administrative) or CTI (Interpretive) or CTN (Networking).
Anyway, the sea stories were fast and furious (NO relation to the current Dept of Justice Charlie Foxtrot of the same name) and a whole lot of folks were being discussed. On Saturday afternoon, the beer and wine started flowing and the sea stories were sometimes repeated!
During our meeting, the President of our Chapter presented some gift cards to two of our members (and their wives). These two families were among the many hundreds of folks who had recently lost their homes to the fires in and around Bastrop, Texas. These folks had about 15 minutes to decide what they should be taking from their house knowing that everything else was going to be gone in just a few minutes. Of course, the gift cards can not replace their photographs, basket collections, trophies, military shadow boxes, etc. But the cards were simply our way of saying "Thank God you survived." and maybe they will help with clothes and such.
Overall, I totally enjoyed my first NCVA reunion and am thinking about attending the national reunion next year in Tuscon, AZ.
* Just to let you all know that the NCVA is an association for all current and former naval cryptologists. That includes US Navy Cryptologic Technicians (formerly known as Communication Technicians and before that, Radiomen, etc.) and US Marine Corps personnel with MOS dealing with cryptology. Naval cryptology began before World War II - remember the scene in the original movie about Pearl Harbor where the naval officer helped break the Japanese codes? Well, that's what our original group was good at. Anyway, for more unclassified information about the NCVA, go to the U.S. Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association website.
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