The Navy Revisited by Grandpa Jim

Jean and I moved from Evanston, IL to Jacksonville, FL in the spring of 1988. In the fall, I got a job as adjunct professor of freshman English at Jacksonville University. Later, I began to feel a call to attend church, again. (It had been many years and a variety of reasons for the long absence.) So, our search for church began. We tried several "mainstream" denominations and just couldn't find one with the "right feel."

Then, one day, I was looking for something in the yellow pages, could have been anything. My browsing happened across a large section devoted to the Mayport Navy Station, which is in Mayport, a suburb of Jax, out on the beach adjacent to Atlantic Beach. I couldn't believe how many telephone numbers were assigned to the navy...even a lot of them to ships! It seemed to me that almost every department on every ship had a phone number! (When I was in the navy, 1944 to 48, I had to go out on the dock and use a pay phone.) See what 50 years can bring?)

Next, I see a listing for the Navy Chapel and its four or five numbers. I called and asked if civilians were allowed to attend services. The sailor taking my call asked me to hold while I searched for a chaplain. He came back and told me that "...if you can get on the base, you're welcome to attend, sir!"

We wound up attending for eleven years and became surrogate grandparents to a whole tribe of sailors' kids. We loved that relationship and still have occasional contact with a few. (While in a teacher's supply store one day, I discovered a treasure trove of stickers. I bought a supply and some small envelopes and rationed out enough for eight or ten kids and took them to chapel.) Jean and I had also started to teach the "children's church" which ran at same time as one of the services. Jean read Bible stories while I sketched relevant pictures on the chalkboard.

On one occasion, we led a very small "caravan" of navy wives and kids to a city inland where I booked four or five rooms for the group so that we could escape a potential hurricane. (All ships together with the dads had been ordered to sea.) We stayed there a couple of days and I spent some time with the kids in the pool. One game I recall was dropping my room key into the deep end and letting kids dive down to see who could retrieve it. They seemed to get a big kick out of it. One parent reported, later, that her kids told her they hoped there would be another hurricane!

We left Jax in 1999 to move to Sanford, FL to be nearer daughter Nancy and family. But that's another memoir.