José Armando Elique interview, January 14, 2019: transcript

AN INTERVIEW WITH JOSÉ ARMANDO ELIQUE An Oral History Conducted by Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez and Maribel Estrada Calderón Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2019 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Nathalie Martinez, Rodrigo Vazquez Editors and Project Assistants: Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Monserrath Hernández, Elsa Lopez, Nathalie Martinez, Marcela Rodriquez-Campo, Rodrigo Vazquez iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE José Armando Elique was born on February 14, 1944 in New York City. Born to Puerto Rican parents that immigrated to the United States in the 20s, Elique spent his childhood in both New York and Puerto Rico. Raised in the South Bronx, Elique’s family were part of the first pioneros from Puerto Ricans to settle in New York City in the twentieth century. Elique served as a radar man in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War on the USS Purdey. After his service, Elique applied to the Port Authority Police Department where his first big assignment included going undercover and investigating gang activity. Over the course of the next 22 years, he rose through the rankings becoming the assistant chief in charge of overseeing v six facilities in the region. Elique is the first and only Latino to reach such rank with the Port Authority. Elique moved to Nevada in 2000 and became the chief of UNLV Police Services. Prior to coming to UNLV, he served as the University Director of Public Safety for the City University of New York (CUNY). Elique is also a member of the National Latino Police Officers Association, an organization that helps train Latino officers on contemporary issues and promote the advancement of Latinos in the police force. As police chief, Elique has fought for the hiring of new police officers to better serve UNLV’s campus and student body. As Chief of Police, Elique oversaw the response of his team to secure the campus and to provide for the needs of those seeking refuge at Thomas and Mack Center on the night of October 1, 2017. Chief Elique is also part of the Remembering 1 October oral history project where he reflected on that night, the role of campus police, coordination with Metro Police, purpose of the Fusion Center, command post, Emergency Operation Center for business continuity, and preparedness of urgent situation and active shooters. He is a graduate of Adelphi University and of Northwestern University’s Traffic Institute of Police Administration and the Police Executive Research Forum’s Senior Management Institute for Police. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with José Armando Elique January 14, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Describes family history in both Puerto Rico and New York City during the 30s. Mentions father’s [José Buenaventura Elique] work building the New York Subway and working for the U.S. Postal Service. Talks about growing up in the South Bronx and the neighborhood dynamics at the time. Elique elaborates on his relationship with his mother [Juanita Elique Díaz] and talks about how he used to interpret for her in public. Elique talks about his education at P.S. 20 and P.S. 75 in the Bronx. ………………………………………………………………………….1 – 5 Elique talks about his mother’s push for him to attend Catholic high school and the process of getting into Cardinal Hayes High School. Talks about his experience and takeaways from his Catholic education. Describes attending St. Francis College in Brooklyn. Elique describes his decision to join the military during the Vietnam War and choose the Navy than risk being assigned the army by the draft. Mentions the Cuban Missile Crisis, becoming a radar man on the USS Purdy, being injured in, and being honorably discharged in 1966……………………....5 – 9 Mentions his job duties on the USS Purdy, his last thoughts before he lost consciously when he was injured in Vietnam, and VA benefits. Talks about returning to the U.S. after being discharged, his family receiving him after boot camp, the racial makeup of the Navy, and his adventures as a sailor traveling between San Juan, Puerto Rico to Guantanamo Bay for repairs. Talks about visiting Puerto Rico as a child, visiting as an adult, and how every time he visited it felt the same………………………………………………………………………………….9 – 14 Talks about his first job after the military at Retail Credit Company out of Atlanta and his experience as an insurance salesman in Manhattan and the Bronx. Describes what it felt to see officers during his commute and thinking that he wanted to apply. Mentions his application for all four departments in the New York police organization. Details takings his qualifying exams to become an officer, how the Port Authority was the first to contact him after qualifying, and his first big assignment going undercover at LaGuardia and John F. Kenny airports. Elique talks about going up in through the ranks………………………………………………….....….15 – 20 Elique talks about the racial makeup of the Port Authority, his encouragement and mentorship with young Latino officers, and being part of the Selection Committee to promote officers. Describes becoming captain in 1984, deputy inspector in 1985, full inspector in 1988, and retiring in 1992. Shares his feelings on becoming the only Puerto Rican and Latino to ever vii achieve such ranks. Talks about the police department relationship with the Latino community. Mentions the racial group Young Lords and addresses the evolution of gang culture both in the East and West Coasts………………………………………………………………….……20 – 25 Talks about retiring from the Port Authority and becoming the chief of the City University of New York (CUNY) System Police Department. Mentions Ann Reynolds former chancellor of the City University of New York and how she offered him the chief position at CUNY. Describes the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a police academy for college cops. Talks about hiring 800 officers for CUNY’s 21 school campuses…………………………….….25 – 28 Elique talks about moving to Las Vegas in 2000. References to Elique’s One October interview where he talks about his career as UNLV’s chief of police. Talks about the Puerto Rican population in Las Vegas and the Puerto Rico Association. Mentions the publicity he received from the Review Journal and the Latin Chamber of Commerce. Describes how the Las Vegas community and its leaders welcomed him at his new job. Talks about the difference in approach of police officers in Nevada compared to New York City and shares his thoughts on the police’s relationship with the Latino community in Las Vegas……………………………………29 – 32 Describes his involvement with the National Latino Police Officers Association and his push to make the police department more diverse. Mentions family traditions such as Christmas and El Día de Reyes. Mentions Puerto Rican foods such as pasteles, platanos, lechon de pernil, coquito, pastelillos, cuchifritos, and chicharrones. Talks about his first wife, their sons, and their grandchildren. Talks about his second wife [Rose Elique], their relationship, and her children……………………………………………………………………………….…… 33 – 38 Talks about Hurricane Maria and its effect on his family in Puerto Rico. Addresses if Puerto Rico should be a state or an independent country. Talks about Puerto Rican music and his love for salsa and conga………………………………………………………….………………38 – 421 Today is January 14, 2019. This is Laurents Banuelos-Benitez. I am in the Oral History Research Center. I am joined today by... Maribel Estrada Calderon. Barbara Tabach. And today we are going to interview Jose. Jose, can you go ahead and spell your name for me and pronounce it? My name is Jose Armando Elique, E-L-I-Q-U-E, my last name. The first two are common spelling. I'd like to start at the beginning. Where were you born? I was born in New York City, actually. What part of New York City? Manhattan. It was a French Hospital. We weren't French, but that was the name of the hospital in Manhattan. Where were your parents from? Puerto Rico. What brought them from Puerto Rico to New York? Just economic opportunities. They were what we used to call in New York pioneros, pioneers. They were in the first group of Puerto Ricans that came over to New York and to the States very, very early on, well before the mass migrations of the fifties and the late forties. About what year did your parents come? They came in 1925 or '30. They were elderly, even when they had me. What did your parents do for a living? My father was a postal worker for about forty-five years. He was a postal inspector in addition to 2 being, first, a postal clerk, then a mailman, then a postal inspector, which is the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service. And your mother? My mother was a housewife most of the time. She worked for a couple of the factories in downtown Lower Manhattan, New York City for a while, but as far back as I can remember, she was just a full-time housewife. Did you have any siblings? I had a sister, Carmen. She was older than me. She was about sixteen years older than me. She just passed away this year in Puerto Rico. She didn't stay in New York? She did, but she went back as she grew older and she married her husband who was Puerto Rican, obviously, and they just moved back there. MARIBEL: Why did your parents choose New York? I think that was the place to come to. It was such a long time ago, tell you the truth, and this stands out in my mind, they came over on a steamship, not a cruise ship, a steamship. They went through Ellis Island and the whole bit. Did they ever share any stories of them going through Ellis Island, with you? Not too many except the difficulty that they had in spelling—the officials there, the difficulty they had in spelling the different names. My father's name was Jose Buenaventura, which means good fortune, Elique. They couldn't spell the middle or the last name. And he couldn't speak much English at the time. He said it took them a long time on the line to get through that phase and he was always concerned—my father was a very polite man and worried about the people he was holding up behind him. He remembers that and he also remembers when they first came 3 here. He used to do tobacco work, farm work, and agricultural work in Puerto Rico. He actually worked on a tobacco farm when he was there and he never smoke after it. He used to like cigars and all that, but he never smoked. It was a warm climate, as you can imagine, temperature and humid down there in the islands. He was not used the cold, wet weather of New York City. When he came up here, the first job and the only job he could get was construction laborer. He actually was on one of the initial crews that were building New York City subways. He would say, "Palo y pico," which was a stick and a pick and digging holes. He said he had blisters. He hated it. He was freezing. It was cold weather. He didn't do that kind of heavy, hard labor, but that's all that was available to him. He used to tell me stories about that. He did that for a few years. Then the opportunity came for him to go into the Postal Service. I don't know how he heard about it, but he did. He applied and he got it. He thought that was the greatest thing. He never left it. He thought that was a secure job, wonderful. He would say, “I'm inside. I've just got to go outside once in a while.” He loved it. Could you describe your childhood home and your neighborhood? We were raised in the South Bronx. The South Bronx is still predominantly Puerto Rican. I remember that the address was 948 Tiffany Street and it was between 163rd Street and Westchester Avenue in the South Bronx. It used to be an Italian and Irish neighborhood, but Puerto Ricans started coming in and those people moved out, not all of them, but a lot of them left. They went to other boroughs and other neighborhoods in the city. I remember when I first hit the streets to play, I didn't speak any English because my 4 mother—actually, she never spoke English all the time until her death there. She didn't have to because it was so predominantly a Puerto Rican-Spanish speaking neighborhood that she didn't have to. What I recall was my mother used to take me to la marketa, which was an open-air market. Most of the merchants there were not Spanish-speaking. Actually, they were mostly Jewish people. I would be my mother's translator as I began to learn English, and I learned that from the street, from playmates. I never went to school. I just became bilingual by necessity. My mother used to take me to do the shopping with her and I would translate for her with the merchants and all that. She knew a few words, but she wasn't fluent at all. I remember doing that and I used to like doing that because I felt like, wow, I'm an important kid here. She needs me or we don't eat. My sister, she was older, and she would go sometimes, but most of the times she couldn't be bothered. She was a teenager with friends and all that kind of stuff. What was schooling like for you? I went to P.S. 20 in the South Bronx—I don't know if it's still there; it was on Simpson Street in the South Bronx—for the first six years. It was good. I don't have any bad memories of it. Those neighborhoods went through transitions and those schools went through transitions as the decades rolled along and they became really bad for a while, then a little bit better, then a little refurbishing from time to time, and now it's still like a middle-class refurbished area. They put up brownstones where they were all walk-up tenement buildings at the time when I was growing up there. But the school was good. I remember none of the teachers were Latina or Latino. Most of the teachers were female, at P.S. 20 and strict. I didn’t go to kindergarten, just to first to sixth grade at P.S. 20. Then P.S. 75. Over there, you went to the sixth grade and then you went to middle school, which was seventh and eighth grade, and that's before you went to high school. I went to 5 the seventh and eighth grade at P.S. 75, a little bit further away but still in the Bronx. That neighborhood was more mixed. It hadn't changed because it wasn't in the middle of South Bronx. It was on the northern end. Anyway, my experiences there, again, were good. I was totally bilingual and when it came time for me to go to high school; it was Morris High School. My mother didn't want me to go to Morris High School. She didn't want me to go to any public high school, but she especially didn't want me to go to Morris because that was the beginning of the gang era, but not gangs like you guys (interviewers) are used to because you're a lot younger. These gangs, they fought with their fists. Their weapons were like maybe they'd rip off a car antennae and they would use that to hit you. But there were a lot of gangs. They had what you call today colors. There were a lot of them and they were my age. She didn't want me to be exposed to that even though we were on the block, but on the block nobody bothered me because I had grown up there all the time. Then my mother—and I remember she had to convince my dad—she wanted me to go to a Catholic school, which you had to pay for. That's why it was difficult for her to convince my father. My father said, "Why? We're already paying...He can go to public school." She said, "No, absolutely not." Then they both said to me, "You're not going to Morris, so start taking these entrance exams with the Catholic diocese of the Bronx." Back then you took an exam; it was like an SAT, even for high school, before you went to one of the Catholic high schools. There were four of them at the time; there was Mount Saint Michael, Cardinal Hayes, Xavier, which was a quasi-military Catholic school, and Fordham Prep. I took the exam and I remember that part distinctly because I had developed a case of athlete's foot when I was very young and the day that I had to take my exam—it was my sister who took me and she almost had to practically carry me. My feet would heal up at night when I slept and then in the daytime when I put 6 pressure on them, they would crack, they would bleed, it was just uncomfortable. It wasn't horrible, but it was horrible to look at and it was horrible to feel. Mom and Dad said, “You're going to take this test and you're going to pass this test." I took the test, like that. I came back and I passed for three out of the four. I was accepted basically. I went to Cardinal Hayes High School. The reason I'm highlighting that is that I believe this was a turning point in my young life. It was a wonderful school. It's still there. Very strict. They had brothers and priests and lay teachers teach you. Back in the day, they could do disciplinary things to you. You better study and you better not act up because they would do stuff to you that they would probably get locked up for today. They'd slap the kids. They'd call you up, "Jose, you were chatting too much." I said, "What?" SMACK. "Sit down and shut up." "Okay." Then if they told your parents and your parents came in, the brother or the priest would say, especially to my father because he didn't want to be embarrassed, so if he said, "He's become a little bit of a discipline problem. We had to smack him a couple of times," then my father would also hit me right in front of the priest, during the ‘open school week’. I said, "I better start behaving a bit," and I did. But besides that corporal type of punishment stuff, I think it instilled in me a study of discipline...I remember studying every night for two hours. It just became a habit. I studied. I did my homework. You had to get good grades in that school. They didn't care if you were paying, you had to be an A, or B student—if you were a C-student, you were on probation; if you were a D-student, they would kick you out. They didn't care if you paid. They wanted all their high school people to go on to college; that was their validation system in that school system. How many kids can you graduate and move on to a four-year degree college, or even a two-year degree college? I really liked it and I say it changed my life because it instilled in me the 7 discipline to study and work hard and that you knew nothing was going to be totally given to you and that everything wasn't all right and everything wasn't somebody else's fault. Sometimes you have mishaps or missteps in life and that's because you made that choice. I know it's hard now. You don't get that a lot in our current society, but that's just the way it was then. I graduated there. What year did you graduate? Nineteen sixty-one. Good thing you already know my age. I graduated in 1962 and despite that I had good study ethic and all that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. From there, I went to a school called St. Francis College. It was another Catholic institution, but it was in Brooklyn, and I had never been to Brooklyn. New York City is a big city. For us going into another borough that was traveling even though you just took the subway and all that stuff. I went there and I remember I was there for about six months and I still didn't know what I wanted to do, if I really wanted to stay in college. Before you move on, could you compare Brooklyn to where you grew up? What was that like, and was it kind of a culture shock? No, not so much a culture. Mostly a distance shock. The institution itself was in downtown Brooklyn on Bergen Street. I was used to that stuff; there were streets like that in the Bronx. The people were very mixed there, also. They had black people there from Haiti and some from the Dominican Republic. Even some Cubans started filtering in way, way back then. I don't remember thinking, oh wow, this is totally foreign. In terms of that there wasn't anything there that was different to me. You were saying you were not sure what you were doing. Yes, this is the first six months in college. Now I turned eighteen. Way back then, there was still 8 a draft and I was 1A; that was a classification that meant I could go to the military service really quickly. I said, "I better start thinking about this," because they didn't care if you were in college, even back then. If they needed you and your name came up, you had to go. It wasn't even a lotto system. It was just a sequential type of thing. They go by dates of birth and start calling according to their needs, but most people are going to go into the army. I said, "I don't want to go into the army." Why not? You're going to laugh, but this is a true story. I didn't mind going into the service. But I said, "I'm not going to the bathroom out in the field. I want a place that has a bathroom." The navy had bathrooms on their ships. The air force on the air bases had bathrooms. So I said, "It's going to be the air force or the navy." I like to travel and the navy had a slogan, “Join the Navy, see the world.” So I went off my own volition and I joined the navy. That was when Vietnam was heating up and the Cuban Missile Crisis and all that. I was going to go in the submarine service, but I couldn't go in the submarine service because my ears couldn't stand the pressure as you went down. Then I went on the opposite of submarines, which is on a destroyer, which is an anti-submarine warfare type of ship, but they were surface ships. I went out there. Before being assigned to a destroyer, I went to Radar School out in Waukegan, Illinois. That was a school to handle radar systems on the ship. I went there for six months and then I went on that ship, a destroyer. I was on the USS Purdy DD-734. It's funny how you remember these numbers on the ship. I still remember my navy service numbers, 6867249; that's the one that they put on your dog tag that identifies you more than your name. I went on the destroyer and I was there until the end of the four years. At the end of the 9 four years, I was ready to come home. The war in Vietnam was heating up and, just my luck, they involuntarily extended the service times of U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy. Whoops, there I was. Now I got extended by four months. We go over there and there I got hurt in Vietnam on the ship. A concussion that blew out my right eardrum, but it healed up again. That's why I wasn't over there for four months. I was only over there for like three months because once I got hurt I remember I got lifted off the destroyer, put to an aircraft carrier, then to a hospital ship, and then all the way back to Rhode Island to Newport, Rhode Island; that was the base. Then I spent a couple of weeks in a naval hospital there while I healed up. Then I was honorably discharged because I had already done more than my time. Where were you stationed in Vietnam? On the USS Purdy. I was never on land. This was on the ship off the shores of Vietnam. We did support for the marines and, in some cases, the army. What was it like out there? At first I didn't even take it seriously—not seriously because as soon as you got into those waters, they call it the theater of war, once you got into those waters, they started having drills every day of what we call general quarters, which is emergency; everybody mans their battle station. You've probably heard that expression on war movies. It's real. No matter what you're doing, sleeping, awake, whatever, you go and man this particular post. Mine was in CIC, Combat Information Center, which was near the bridge of the destroyer. At first they were doing that almost every day and we were what they called port and starboard watches. Basically we were working already twelve-hour shifts, so you are on for twelve and you are off for twelve. Technically that was true except when you were off the twelve, you were still doing maybe maintenance in your particular area or going to these drills because if the drill alarm came, you 10 had to go whether you were sleeping, on duty or off duty; it didn't matter, you had to go. The time I got hurt I didn't believe it was for real because, like I said, it was drills. By the time that I got hurt—and I was outside on the deck—they said, "This is not a drill; this is not a drill. General quarters." Then I got up from what I was doing and I started running. But they sealed the ship from the inside, which is normal procedure. And it's flat on the outside. It will have a doorknob basically that spins; that's from the inside. But if you're on the outside, then no handle or anything; it's flush. They seal that up watertight. If you're outside and you didn't get in in time, too bad. That's why the air concussion thing did what it did. It didn't hit the ship. It was airburst. What's funny about those shells—I know you've heard the expression that the bullet you hear or the round you hear didn't get you because the projectile is faster than the speed of sound. You're going to feel it before you hear it. In this particular case, I didn't hear it. I saw a flash up there and then I just felt as if somebody had kicked me in the right side of my head. I remember it was a pretty strong hit. I remember thinking to myself—and I think my last conscious words that I recall saying was, Mami, me mataron; Mom, they've killed me. I was twenty-one or something, and it all felt like a dream. Anyway, I got back finally to the naval base, was treated in a naval hospital, and I was honorably discharged from the navy. Actually, it turned out to be a blessing, if one could call it that, in disguise because in the service when you get hurt or develop a medical condition, it is what they call Service Connected and then you qualify for Veterans Administration benefits. I don't have to pay for medical care ever if I don't want to. It's not good for my wife or dependents, but me, if I didn't have any other insurance or private doctor, I could always go to a VA hospital or VA clinic and they would treat me. BARBARA: What year were you discharged? 11 Almost 1967, October of 1966. At that time as a Vietnam veteran returning, what was that experience like? It wasn't like it is now where everybody is thanking you for your service and all that. Back at that time the antiwar movement was really growing, and no matter what side of that you were on, it was something that you always felt that you didn't want to brag that you were in the service. The first thing I did was I would take my uniform off because I didn't want to get scowled from people. I was never attacked or anything like that. But there was a sense of, oh, did he tell you? Oh, so you were out there killing babies. Or killing minorities or whatever, even though I was a minority. Those were the political times, so I didn't feel too bad. Now I love it when you see these kids or even if I tell people, even as a former policeman. People still say, "Thank you for your service." That's today. It was a far cry from that back then. Literally half the population—like we've split now on political lines. That was split along favor or lack thereof, of being in any outside wars basically. I didn't talk about it too much. I didn't say, "Yes, I was in the navy." I never got any tattoos or anything in the service. I just didn't advertise it and people left you alone. Even though when I started college, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do and that's why I went into the service, not for any political reason or philosophy. MARIBEL: What did your family think when you left? Oh, my mother? I remember the first time I came back from Navy boot camp. I thought I was looking great, slim, in shape, three months. She started crying. "Oh my god, they don't feed you. ¡Me mataron el muchachito!” Oh my god, she was like...I would say, "What is this about?" I would look in the mirror. And then you came back with a shaved head. I think I was one thirty-five, a hundred and forty pounds when I came back. Didn't have an ounce of fat on me, nothing. I felt great, but she was crying; that's how she felt. She got over it. Nothing she could do 12 about it. She got over it. Can you describe the presence of Latinos in the navy? Oh, yes, I can. Back then I definitely was the only Latino radar man on my ship. There were divisions on that ship. There was a communications division. There was operations. There were electronic technicians, radar men, etc. That was the beginning of the computers because even all our gun systems began to be guided by not line of sight, but by computerized systems, very elementary at the time, very novel to them at that time. I was the only Hispanic one in that particular division. The only other people that I saw with Spanish names were Filipinos and they did what we call the mess, and it's not a mess; it's kitchen stuff. They were in the kitchen. They assisted the officers. Like restaurant people on the ship, they were the cooks and all that. A lot of them had similar names because Spain, as you know, took them over prior to 1988. So there were Filipinos. I remember a lot of New Yorkers on there and a lot of Italian guys and all that. There was one guy there from Jamaica. The ship had around two hundred sailors, but I don't recall having—and I'm thinking as I'm talking here—certainly no Puerto Rican friends although the Puerto Ricans I knew were heavily involved in being in the service, but they were mostly army and air force and they were recruited directly from Puerto Rico. But in the Navy I didn't have too much exposure to Latinos. BARBARA: You had friends from your neighborhood who served? Well, from the city. I won't say right from my neighborhood, but from the city I did have friends, yes. That's how that went. I'm almost positive I was the only Puerto Rican guy on the U.S.S Purdy. Jack Crandall was the commanding officer's name. He was the captain of the ship. Sometimes we’d have to pull into San Juan Harbor in Puerto Rico. We’d go to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for repairs, which by the way that was the only place you got to go back to when I was in 13 the Navy; you didn't get to take a trip to Havana or nothing. Fidel Castro was in full swing at the time. We had just had the blockade. But we would go to Guantanamo because there was still a naval base there. From there, since you couldn't go on what they called liberty while you weren't working in Cuba, you could hop onto a military plane over to Puerto Rico or you could wait until the ship usually went to Puerto Rican waters to try out the repairs basically; shakedown cruises, they used to call it. Whenever we would go to Puerto Rico, I would usually be standing right on the bridge with the captain because he had always a radar man there. I had a little radar supe and then we would compare it to what we were actually seeing as we approached the pier of the base. Once we secured the ship, I always remember Jack, Captain Crandall, he would say to me, "Jose, I know you've got family here and you lived here. You just call the officer of the day every day and let him know you're alive and just come back to the ship when we're going to depart." Sometimes we were there for three or four days and he didn't charge me leave or anything. He was a very nice man. He also has passed away. He was a lot older than me even back then. It's funny how you remember some of those things. That's the consideration that he gave me and I always r