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On Sunday, the 3rd of November in 2002, deep-water diver Bob Foster discovered the wreckage of the USS YF-415, a Navy lighter that had sunk on the afternoon of Thursday, 11 May 1944. The YF-415 (YF = Yard Freighter) had been in the process of dumping condemned ammunition, pyrotechnics, and ordnance into deep water just outside Boston Harbor when something went very wrong.
According to survivors of the incident, there was a “Whoosh!” and then flames and explosions.
The YF-415 shortly after its construction
In not-too-distant waters, headed for the Atlantic on a secret mission to report on weather conditions prior to D-Day, my father’s ship, the USS Zircon (PY-16), caught sight of the YF-415 in trouble. The Zircon‘s official mission would be delayed.
Details regarding what happened aboard the Zircon in the ensuing minutes will probably remain unknown as the principals are no longer around to tell them, and there appear to be a few holes in the witnesses’ testimonies before the court of inquiry. What isn’t in question, however, is that my father and one other sailor, Paul Magera, lowered a motorboat into the cold, foggy Atlantic and went searching for survivors from the YF-415. On their first trip, they returned with eleven men, one of whom was severely burned and would die the next day.
Front Page, Boston Globe, 13 May 1944
Signalman Henry J. O’Toole joined my father and Magera for the next trip out and returned with three more men. A third trip yielded no additional survivors. Subsequently, my father was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, which I believe is the highest award one can receive for valour in a non-combat situation.
Copy of my dad’s letter of citation
These are the basic facts of an incident about which my three brothers and I barely knew a thing growing up. Dad didn’t talk much about his service, and we—no doubt more interested in baseball or hockey or music or girls—didn’t inquire. Or… any inquiries were met with curt, vague answers that likely satisfied us at the time. I recall my mother telling me that Dad had helped to pull men from the ocean during the war, but little beyond that. I recall, too, that my adolescent mind embellished the incident with the menace of sharks.
But that’s where it ended. I never saw his medal, only a bar of ribbons left nonchalantly, unceremoniously in a desk drawer. The only remnants of his naval service that I recall seeing as a kid were that bar of ribbons, a couple of beige “Navy blankets” (as they were referred to around the house), and a canvas duffel bag (with “Power” written at the top) that was tucked into storage chest in the shadows of my parents’ bedroom closet. It wasn’t until he died in 1992 that my brothers and I saw the above letter of citation he’d received from the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet when my mom showed it to the priest prior to his funeral.
Some years later, once the internet became the internet, and possibly after the YF-415‘s wreckage had been discovered, I received an email from my brother Mike with information about the ship and its demise. I can’t recall now if it was the Northern Atlantic Dive Expeditions’ website or some other shipwreck site, but I didn’t pay it much mind beyond the satisfaction of having learned a few more details about that day.
And then, in 2014, on the 70th anniversary of the incident, I did a web search to see if any newspapers—in Boston perhaps—had published stories about the disaster. I believe I typed in “USS Zircon” + “YF-415” + “John Power.” What came up was a newsletter from NADE with an update on the incident, thanks to first-hand reports by Zircon sailors Isidore “Teddy” Bertone and Anthony Susinno, who had remained close friends after the war. In his telling of what happened that day, Teddy mentioned my father, “Johnny Powers.”
I cannot adequately describe the surreal aspect of someone I’ve never heard of in my life talking about my father.
I contacted Heather Knowles at NADE to let her know that my dad was the Johnny Powers in the newsletter, misspelled name notwithstanding (there’s no S on the end of our name). She sent me a photo that hadn’t made the cut for the newsletter—one I’d never seen before. It was a group photo of the Zircon‘s radiomen and aerographers, and there in the back row, looking like he was about to kick someone’s ass, was my dad.
Three years later—because I am a weird mix of introvert and extrovert— I finally got in touch with Teddy Bertone. But I had let one too many years pass, and I deeply regretted hearing from Teddy that Anthony Susinno died only a month or two earlier. In the fall of 2017, I met Teddy and his family, and it was at that time that it occurred to me that there might be more sailors alive who were on the ship that day. To this day, I have spoken with two: Clarence Livingstone, who didn’t recall the incident, and Richard Garrison, who reiterated the gruesome details of that day. I’ve also spoken with three other Zircon sailors whose assignments to the Zircon came later. (Clarence, who died in May of 2018, admitted that he wasn’t right after his experiences at Okinawa, where he lost several of his friends. I sent him photos from the Zircon hoping to jog his memory, but nothing clicked. His godson told me recently that he just didn’t want to talk about it.)
Isidore “Teddy” Bertone, 16 October 2017, Staten Island, New York
As best as I can recall, Dad never spoke with any Zircon sailors after the war ended, at least not after he and my mother moved from Staten Island (where Mom had grown up and where Dad met her) to Toledo, Ohio, where Dad had grown up. I had never heard the name of John Gigarjian in our household even though he was my dad’s best man. I had seen his photograph, of course, amongst my parents’ wedding photos but never knew his name (which is sort of untrue… it was written as “Gigarten” on my parents’ marriage certificate). Neither do I recall hearing the name Carl Lester Miller, although based on photos, my dad appears to have been his best man.
This “project” remains a work in progress. What began as research into the events of 11 May 1944 has become something bigger. I’m not a military fetishist, nor am I a big believer in the “Greatest Generation” myth. While indeed I’m interested in knowing what happened with regard to the YF-415 incident, my attention has mostly turned towards the men who served aboard the Zircon, and to honouring them for more than just their service. It is the human element that has caught my fancy. Who were these four hundred or so men who came together during a five-year period?
With this blog, I hope to tell some of their stories, as well as more about a yacht named Nakhoda purchased from a millionaire and converted for war duty. I post fairly regularly here (despite working on several other research projects), so please subscribe to receive notifications.
If you are related to someone who served aboard either the USS Zircon (PY-16) or the USS YF-415 and have found this site as a result of searching either for his name or for one of the ships, please get in touch. If your father or uncle or grandfather or cousin served aboard the Zircon, please consider joining my Facebook group where other Zircon families share stories and photos. I have also created a blog dedicated to the YF-415 disaster, which is still in development as I try to obtain documents regarding that incident. If you want to learn more about that, please subscribe to get notifications when I update it.
Thurlow Winsfield Manzie was a member of the Zircon’s first crew—a Plank Owner—and as such, he’s been somewhat towards the top of my list of sailors to research. Of the many times I have pored over the names of the sailors on my spreadsheet—particularly those for whom I’ve yet to make contact with family members—his name stood out for its uniqueness. I’ve made several another attempts to find out more about him, hoping that time has brought with it additional archived newspapers to scour and/or newly available documents at Ancestry. OR someone else is researching him at Ancestry. Last year, I contacted the public library in Patchogue hoping to get a copy of his and/or his wife’s obituary, but neither appears to have had one.
Manzie was born in Brookhaven, New York in Suffolk County, Long Island on 1 February 1905. His parents were Louis Willis Manzie, an Italian emigré, and Margaret Sarah Manspile Manzie, from Rockbridge, Virginia. According to the 1910 United States Census, Louis was a mason/bricklayer; in the 1920 census, he was a “chauffeur” in the bus industry, which at first I thought meant he was a bus driver, but I happened to find a 1924 news article which described him as a taxi driver. According to the 1915 New York State Census, his occupation is listed as farmer. The 1910 and 1915 censuses indicate that the Manzies lived on South Country Road, which runs between Brookhaven and Patchogue, but sometime between 1915 and 1920, they moved to Patchogue proper, which had a population of about 3,000 at the time. Together, Louis and Margaret operated Manzie Villa*, a “well-known boarding house in the village,” according to Margaret’s 1934 obituary. Less than a week before Margaret’s death on 25 October 1934, Louis put the business up for sale, but at least as late as 1949 (based on its appearance in newspaper articles) Louis still owned it.
Patchogue Advance, Friday, 19 October 1934
I found in later reports that Thurlow had attended the Bay Avenue School in Patchogue, but I don’t know if that included a high school education. I could find no references to him in newspapers until October of 1923 when, at 18, he enlisted in the Navy. Apparently, neither the author nor the proofreader at The County Review were very, uh… thurrow…
The County Review, Riverhead, New York, Friday, 12 October 1923
Subsequent correctly-spelled mentions of Thurlow in The County Review make note that he’d recovered from an illness at the Naval hospital in Newport, Rhode Island (14 December 1923); a short visit with his parents while in training in Newport (4 January 1924); another short visit while stationed at the training station in Hampton Roads, Virginia (11 July 1924); and a fourteen-day furlough (a Thurlow furlough? Haha!) home while stationed at Norfolk, Virginia (23 July 1925).
Four years after his enlistment, Thurlow was given an honorable discharge from the Navy, and he returned home to Patchogue.
The County Review, Thursday, 13 October 1927
According to the New York State Marriage Index, Thurlow married Frieda Hildegard (“Hilda”) Pfeifer on 29 June 1937 in Sag Harbor, New York, about an hour’s drive east of Patchogue on Long Island. I haven’t been able to find a newspaper account of it yet or even a simple daily log entry in the local paper, which is actually a bit surprising considering the reportage of Thurlow’s visits to his folks in the mid-1920s. (Note also in the same Marriage Index that Thurlow’s father’s name appears above his as he married for a second time—to Nellie May Beckwith—on 19 December 1937.)
New York State Marriage Index, 1937
Hilda was born in Germany, and was previously married to Hermann Karl Fritz Samse, which explains why—until I found an arriving passengers list from 5 May 1923 in which she and Hermann came to the United States from Bremen (they resided in Breslau) aboard the SS Yorck—I had been unable to find reference to her ANYwhere. Once I came across that, I found references to Hermann’s divorce from her in 1935, just a couple of years before she married Manzie.
Newport (Rhode Island) Mercury, Friday, 7 June 1935
It’s a mystery to me as to how Thurlow would have met Hilda, since she had been living in Rhode Island after arriving from Germany, but it’s possible that there was an opportunity while Thurlow was in Newport between 1923 (when she appears to have arrived in the States for the first time) and when his enlistment ended in 1927. Herman Samse claimed Frieda had left him in 1926, so it’s entirely possible and plausible.
In 1936, Hilda purchased a lot from S. A Mills on Rider Avenue in Patchogue for $1000.
The Suffolk County News, Thursday, 2 October 1936
There’s no way of knowing, of course, if she and Thurlow had met by then, but it seems all too likely that Thurlow might have been the reason she’d left Hermann. In a news article a number of years later, their residence was given as 253 Rider Avenue, which also lines up with the 1950 census.
I can’t find a 1930 census which includes Thurlow, but he probably had taken up residence with his employer, retired Colonel Chauncey B. Humphrey, and was just not enumerated. By way of marriage to Emma W. Durkee, Humphrey inherited the vast East Patchogue estate of her father, Eugene W. Durkee, who’d built a fortune in spices. In January of 1939, Thurlow was in the news again (as “Theodore” this time!) when a fire occurred at the Humphrey mansion, damaging it considerably. (A longer story here.)
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Monday, 9 January 1939
In 1940, Thurlow was a private chauffeur and living in Humphrey’s Mansion, as was Hilda, so it’s possible that the property Hilda had purchased in 1936 was a vacant lot at the time, and a house wasn’t completed until after 1940.
On 7 October 1940, Manzie re-enlisted, and on 25 March 1941, he was received aboard the Zircon as an Electrician’s Mate, Second Class (EM2c) when it was commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He would serve aboard the Zircon for little more than a couple of months before he was transferred to the USS Calypso (AG-35) on 2 June 1941. He served aboard the Calypso for a little over seven months, the USS Massachusetts (BB-59) for almost nine, the USS New Jersey for six, and for about fourteen months aboard the USS Franklin (CV-13), an aircraft carrier which was dive-bombed by the Japanese, an attack which killed eight hundred men and injured hundreds more. Manzie survived the attack and was rescued from the ocean. As noted in the story below, he had also survived an attack when he was aboard the Massachusetts. There is no mention of his stint aboard the Zircon.**
Patchogue Advance, Thursday, 24 May 1945
Five months after his thirty-day survivor’s leave after the Franklin attack, Manzie decided to hang up his Navy duffle bag and return home for good. He got another local-boy-does-good story which again fails to mention his service aboard the Zircon. Did he forget or did he consider it not worthy of mentioning since it was only a patrol yacht and not a “real” war ship?
Patchogue Advance, Thursday, 25 January 1945
In the 1950 U.S. Census, Manzie’s occupation was as a Maintenance Electrician at a Frozen Food Plant, possibly Walter and Mitchell on East Main Street in Patchogue, and little else about him appeared in newspapers once he returned home, although he appears (barely) in a 1958 Patchogue Advance photo regarding an Adult education program in Patchogue. (His face is the second from left.)
Patchogue Advance, Thursday, 16 January 1958
A week later, Manzie was inducted into Patchogue Bay Power Squadron at the Suffolk Boat Club, so it appears that he enjoyed sailing.
A fire broke out at the Manzie Villa property in 1961 (although it was not called Manzie Villa in the paper), but there was no mention of Thurlow, only of the owner, “Mrs. Louise Manzie.” Manzie’s father, Louis, died in 1957, so I can only assume that his widow, Nellie, maintained ownership and control of the boarding house going forward. I wonder, though, if the reporter got her name wrong or if it was a typo—”Mrs. Louise” versus “Mrs. Louis.” I could find no such person named Louise on Ancestry, so I have come to the conclusion that it should have read “Mrs. Louis Manzie,” unless for some reason Nellie adopted the name Louise.
Thurlow Winsfield Manzie died 17 August 1996 at 91 and Hilda died a couple of years later at 95.
*The Manzies purchased the property, previously known as Newin’s Villa, in either June or July of 1924.
**As noted in a previous news article, Manzie also served on the USS Oregon during his first tour of duty from 1923 to 1927. I’m skeptical that he served on the Oregon as it was decommissioned before he had enlisted, and without obtaining his Official Military Personnel File (OMPF), I don’t know and can’t confirm much about his activities prior to World War II. That said, I have requested documentation from the National Archives, so an update of this page is likely to occur at some point.
As I press on with trying to locate family members of Zircon sailors, I occasionally think about the ship in its other incarnations: as Frederick J. Fisher’s Nakhoda, as the pilot boat New York, and as John W. Mecom’s born-again yacht, New York. Because I want so desperately to know if the ship still exists somewhere, perhaps as a houseboat in some bayou in Houston or Galveston, I tried searching through Texas historical newspapers the other day hoping to find reference to it. I did manage to find articles about his son’s yachts—he had four of them at one time—but nothing about the New York. I can’t imagine that there was no news coverage of the ship having been run aground in Corpus Christi in 1985, but so far, I haven’t found reference to it.
Recently, Newspapers [dot] com added 450 newspapers to its archives, so I did another search for articles about Mecom’s purchase of the ship from the Sandy Hook Pilots Association. The ship had been a pilot boat in New York Harbor for about twenty years when the association decided to build a brand new ship to replace it, so I was hoping to find articles leading up to the sale of the ship, or perhaps photos of Mecom sailing off to Houston in his new toy, but no. Nada. Perhaps there are articles about it that just haven’t yet been acquired by Newspapers [dot] com.
Despite my frustration—or perhaps because of it—I began to look for articles about the ship while it was still in service as a pilot boat. I found a New Jersey newspaper with a profile of Walter Sturgeon, who piloted the Queen Elizabeth II into New York Harbor during its maiden voyage on 7 May 1969. So, I looked up Walter and found his obituary, then tried to locate one of his children, which I did. I sent her an email asking if maybe there were photographs of him aboard the New York or maybe even just pictures of the ship. She responded almost immediately with a picture of what she thought was the New York. Well, it was, but it was the previous Sandy Hook pilot boat known as New York. The ex-Zircon replaced it in 1950, only to be subsequently replaced with the brand new ship in 1971. She said she’d get with her siblings to see if any of them had photographs.
The next morning, I received another email from her with another attachment, a picture of a painting that her grandmother had commissioned of the ex-ZirconNew York as a gift for Walter, and just like those moments when another Zircon family member has shared photographs of my dad that I’d never seen, it was like discovering gold.
Painting by Andrew Gunderson (Photo courtesy of Maureen Sturgeon)
Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, I corrected the perspective, brightened it up a bit, and made a slight colour correction.
It never ceases to amaze me how much is out there in the world that is related to the Zircon. And I can’t help but wonder how many people who have been associated with the ship and/or who have photographs or paintings or other memorabilia who have no clue about its history.
When I found the article about Walter Sturgeon, I didn’t pay a great deal to the photograph that accompanied the story since it was so muddy. After sharing the article with his daughter, however, and asking here if she knew the name of the artist (Andrew Gunderson) she pointed out to me that the painting was on the wall behind her family.
Echoes-Sentinel, Warren Township, New Jersey, Thursday, 15 May 1969
Most of the time, there is no real logic to what I post here. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. Most often, I come across something that excites me to the point of wanting to share it. That’s about it.
Recently, I received about thirty photographs from the daughter of a sailor with whom my dad served aboard the USS YMS-75 in 1945. She sent them to me to scan, which I promptly did, and got them back on their way to her in a just couple of days. Because there were names on the back of some of the photos, I delved back into my searches for the families of YMS-75 sailors so that I could let them know about the photos. I ran out of postcards to send out, so I ordered more, and did a little more searching as I waited their arrival. I sent out another batch when they did.
Then a few days ago I got a request from someone to join the Facebook group I created for families of Zircon sailors. And then another. So, I opened up my spreadsheet with the four hundred-plus names on it, re-organized the data so that the men who were on the ship at the same time as my dad were at the top of the sheet, and I commenced again to search for those for whom I’d not yet located family—it’s a constant loop going from top to bottom and back again.
One of those men was Jack Joseph Edwards.
Interestingly, there were two Jack Edwards who were Zircon sailors—one was Jack Joseph Edwards, and the other was John Robert Edwards, but who went by “Jack.” This has occasionally confused me as I’ve looked at the former’s name in the spreadsheet—I initially think, “I’ve already found him!” only to realize that no, I hadn’t… it was the other Jack Edwards.
So it was in earnest that I began yet another deep dive for Jack Joseph Edwards. I’m not sure why I had given up on him previously. Perhaps Ancestry hadn’t yet acquired access to the documentation it currently has? Perhaps Newspapers.com hadn’t yet added newspapers to its collection that provided me with more useful information this time around? Maybe I’ve become more adept with my searches? Whatever it was, I created an Ancestry profile for Edwards and began connecting dots.
His father, Joseph Roy Edwards, had been—according to his obituary—president and treasurer of the Mutual Milk Company and a past president of the Indiana Milk Foundation, so he seems to have been a bit of a mover and shaker in the Indianapolis area. But according to U.S. Censuses, he was a manager of an athletic club (1920), refrigerator salesman (1930), and lighting assistant, known as a “grip,” at a photographic studio (1940) in California. The rest of the obituary seems to line up, but it’s weird that there’s no other evidence of a career in the milk industry.
His mother, Marcella Smith, graduated Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis in 1922, and married Joseph, four years her senior, in April of 1923. Jack was born seven months later on 21 November 1923 in either Indianapolis or Terra Haute, Indiana. (His draft registration card says the latter, but I’m apt to believe it was actually in Indianapolis.)
Joseph and Marcella had two more children together, Betty Jean (1925) and Robert David (1927), but by 1930, they had divorced; Marcella married Wilmer Presley (W. P. or Jeff, as he appears to have been known) Jeffries, and subsequent news references about the children noted that Jeffries was the children’s father, so I suspect it was not an amiable divorce. Joseph would also remarry—Bessie Lorene McCoy Murphy—and have three more children with her… Ronald Roy, Donald Bruce, and Gary Owen.
Marcella Smith high school photo (1922) and possibly her wedding photo
Jack’s Senior class high school yearbook (1942) from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis indicates that he went to school in California at Fairfax High School in Bakersfield, and at Inglewood High School. I’m guessing that he moved there with his father and his new wife. I was able to find a couple of class photos from Inglewood’s 1939 and 1940 yearbooks (Fairfax didn’t publish individual underclass portraits, so it’s possible he’s in one of the class’s group portraits), so it’s likely the move occurred before 1938 as that is when I think he attended Fairfax. There appears to have been some kind of lag time between his Junior and Senior portraits, which is probably due to the move back to Indiana.
1939, 1940 (Inglewood High School), 1942 Shortridge High School
Edwards enlisted in the Navy on 18 June 1942, so he couldn’t have been out of high school very long when he made that decision. Fifteen days before he reported for duty on the Zircon, and while he was still in Navy Radio School at the University of Wisconsin, the Indianapolis Star ran this story about local servicemen.
Indianapolis Star, Monday, 9 November 1942
Reports of Changes from 30 June 1942 to 30 November 1942
After reporting to the Receiving Station in Indianapolis, then to the Great Lakes Training Center, and then (as noted in the above news article) to the radio school in Wisconsin, the Zircon was Edwards’ first seaward assignment, and he was received aboard the ship on 24 November 1942, shortly after the ship returned from convoy duty to the naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba. His rating at the time was Seaman, Second Class (S2c).
USS Zircon deck log entry for 24 November 1942
It looks as though his time aboard was pretty uneventful as his name doesn’t appear on deck logs again until 2 April 1943, when he was transferred to the Brooklyn Naval Hospital for unspecified reasons; he returned on the 10th of May.
USS Zircon deck log entries for 2 April 1943 and 10 May 1943
A term I’ve only learned since beginning this project is Absent Over Leave (AOL). Before, I’d only been acquainted with Absent Without Leave (AWOL), and while both are similar in that the sailor (in this case) is not where he’s supposed to be at a specific time, the former refers to not being accounted for after having been granted official leave; the latter refers to a situation in which the sailor didn’t have permission to be gone from quarters in the first place.
Anyway, on 29 August 1943, Edwards was two hours and forty minutes late in returning from leave. He quite possibly had a good explanation for his tardiness as I found no subsequent report of punishment having been meted out.
USS Zircon deck log entries, 29 August 1943
A couple of months later, on 16 October 1943, Jack Joseph Edwards was transferred from the Zircon to the Naval Receiving Station in New York. His rating at the time was Radioman, Third Class (RM3c), so I suspect that prior to his departure, he spent time in somewhat close quarters with my dad, who was a Soundman (sonar). It seems logical to me anyway. I can’t determine where Edwards actually left the ship as several men were transferred that day—to Norfolk, Virginia, Boston, and Miami, Florida—and there’s no way that the Zircon was in all four of those places in the course of ten hours, especially not in the order in which they appear on the deck log.
USS Zircon deck log entry, 16 October 1943
Jack Joseph Edwards was received on board the USS Ariel (AF-22) on 29 October 1943 for transfer to the USS SC-680, on which he was received on 1 November 1943. On 1 March 1944, he was promoted to Radioman, Second Class (RM2c), but I found no Report of Changes for the SC-680 which referred to him obtaining leave. But surely, he was granted leave at about this time as he married Ruth Heady on 3 March 1944 in Indianapolis. Again, I find it odd that Jack’s biological father is not mentioned in the next day’s article about the wedding, so his parents’ post-divorce relationship must have been pretty bad.
Indianapolis Star, Saturday, 4 March 1944
Edwards served aboard the SC-680 until 31 July 1944, when he was transferred for the purpose of attending the Navy Training School in Chicago. The Report of Changes specified “Pre-Radio Materiel.” I’m uncertain as to when he left the Navy, but it was probably within a year.
Jack and Ruth Heady Edwards moved to California, eventually settling in Fresno. They had three children together—Jay, James, and Janice—and would divorce in August of 1970, only to remarry in April of 1976, or so documents available at Ancestry suggest. Ruth died 26 September 1992 and Jack died 10 March 2002.
Because I’m sure that there are many photos and miscellaneous other items related to the Zircon in its various incarnations (yacht, warship, pilot boat) floating about in people’s garages and attics and closets and drawers, or on vintage collectors’ shelves, I have several saved searches at eBay in the event something of interest comes up for sale or auction. A few of the searches are for known articles about the ship in sailing or boating magazines that were published at about the time the Navy purchased the yacht Nakhoda from Frederick J. Fisher.
This morning, however, an item came up I’d not been aware of, likely because there is no textual content in the magazine about either the Zircon or the Nakhoda. I’m certain that the seller searched for “P.Y. 16” in order to determine the identify of the ship, which was then added to the item’s title and description, which is what triggered the notification.
Motor Boating, June 1942, Illustration by Meredith Anna Scott
I found the issue (Volume 69, Issue 6) of the magazine archived at Google Books, and found the name of the artist who created the cover art.
Meredith Anna Scott was a writer and artist who appears never to have married, so had no children. According to her obituary published in the Providence (Rhode Island), she was born in Framingham, Massachusetts to Henry F. and Alice G. (Brown) Scott.
She graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and had her work—both writings and illustrations—published in Motor Boating, Ships and the Sea, Travel magazine, Atlantic Advocate and the Providence Journal.
Scott was a member of the West Bay Yacht Club in Warwick, Rhode Island, as well as the Steamship Historical Society of America. She was a member of the Board of Overseers and was an archivist for the Friends of the SS Nobska.
All twelve of these sailors were received aboard the Zircon on 3 April 1941. With the exception of one, they served for less than two weeks, and as it was noted on the deck log for that day, the men had reported on board between 0800 and 1200 hours “for temporary duty in connection with training.”
Edward William Edwards, S2c Francis Woods Keefe, S2c William Edward* Whitney, S2c Irwin Earle Meyer, S2c Harold Eugene Clift, S2c Thomas Frank Fiorini, S2c George Richard Kaufmann, S2c Frank Joseph Strakosch, S2c Theodore Charles Metzing, S2c John Francis Ronkovitz, S2c Burton Sandiford Evans, F3c Robert John Hendricks, F3c
You’ll notice that two of the sailors were Firemen, Third Class (F3c) and the rest were Seamen, Second Class (S2c).
From Zircon deck log, 3 April 1941
Clift and Ronkovitz were transferred off the ship on the 11th and 14th respectively, and the rest, save for Evans, were transferred on the 15th. Evans would remain on board until 10 March 1943, and be promoted to Fireman, First Class (F1c) in August of 1942 before being released from “all active duty for the purpose of enrollment and assignment to the Training School for Prospective Licensed Officers in the Maritime Service.”
I’ve come across quite a few sailors who pulled temporary duty on the Zircon, but this group of men came aboard not two weeks into the Zircon’s commission. I suspect that the ship itself was being run through various exercises in its first month to prepare it for regular duty, so the Navy took the opportunity to train sailors and officers during that time. I find it interesting that all of the men’s service numbers begin with either 402 or 403, so I wonder if that’s denotes something. I recently came across a deck log which documents receiving six Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) cadets aboard, and every one had a service number that began with 404. Perhaps men were assigned service numbers upon completion (or commencement) of their initial training, so if trainees were at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, for example, they might all have had the same prefix? Or perhaps if they all enlisted at the same place? I couldn’t find anything online about it, but the answer’s out there somewhere.*
Because these sailors’ time aboard the Zircon was brief, I’m not inclined to do a deep dive on their lives, but my tendency is, in fact, to do deep dives on their lives. Mostly because I can’t help my curious self, but also because I want to present the basic facts as accurately as possible. That said, there were 450 or so men that came and went between March of 1941 and May of 1946, so I need to try to set a limit for myself. It’s very possible, of course, that I’ve misrepresented the life facts of some of these men, especially considering the hit-or-miss aspect of the available documents.
Edward William Edwards, S2c, was born in Staten Island 15 March 1920 to Edward A. Edwards and Catherine Sullivan Edwards. In addition to the temporary duty aboard the Zircon, he served on the Wyoming (AG-17), Maddox (DD-622), DuPont (DD-152), MSTS American Mariner (a cadet training ship… temporary duty again), and the LST-1035. He married Myrtle Audrey Seaman (!) on 17 November 1941, and they had one daughter, Pamela Audrey. Edwards died 28 January 2005.
Francis Woods Keefe, S2c, was born in Brooklyn, New York on 26 September 1913, the oldest of five sons to John Joseph Keefe and Elizabeth “Bessie” Woods Keefe… his brothers: John, Jr, Thomas, Charles, and George. At the time he enlisted in the Navy, he worked at the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. He married divorcée Lois Martha Lafferty in October of 1943 and they had four children together: Constance, Kathryn, Francis, and Lois. After divorcing in 1953, Keefe married Elizabeth Judd Mills and had a daughter, Tura Elizabeth. Keefe died on 10 August 2000, and it appears that at some point, he reclaimed what I assume to be his original family name, O’Keefe, as that’s the name on his grave marker, which also indicates that he’d become an officer before leaving the Navy. Taking a quick look, I found that he was commissioned as an Ensign in 1941, and Lieutenant (j.g.) in December of 1945.
William Edward Whitney, S2c, was born 16 February 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, to Henry “Harry” John Whitney and Mary “Mae” Agnes Dougherty Whitney. He appears to have had three siblings: Harry, John, and Thelma, with Thelma looking to have died in her first year of life. He married Ann Teresa Hamilton, a widow who had a son, James Donald, by her first husband George W. Montgomery, and he and Ann had two children together, Robert and Kathleen. He was transferred from the Zircon to the USS Wassuc (CMC-3) on 15 April 1941 and three times received a rating upgrade—to S1c, COX, and BM2c—and was transferred off the ship on 9 February 1944. While the United States Department of Veterans Affairs Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) Death File indicates that Whitney was discharged from the Navy on 10 Oct 1945, the 1950 U.S. Census listed “Armed Forces” as his occupation. Whitney died 10 February 1979.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 19 May 1946
Irwin Earle Meyer, S2c, was born in Brooklyn, New York on 25 April 1919 to Samuel and Lottie Zaltz Meyer, who had emigrated from Russia and Germany, respectively. He enlisted in the Navy on 10 October 1940 in Whitestone, Queens, New York, and his first assignment appears to have been this temporary duty aboard the Zircon. He would go on to serve on the USS Wassuc (CMC-3), where he was promoted to Seaman First Class (S1c) on 1 October 1941. On 7 September 1942, he transferred to the Naval Training Center in Noroton Heights, Connecticut for radio school. After training, he was received aboard the USS Elizabeth C. Stanton (AP-69) on 13 March 1943 as a Radioman Third Class (RM3c), and transferred to the USS Barnett on 3 May 1943, where he was promoted to RM2c on 1 December 1943. He was transferred to the USS Samuel Chase (APA 26) on 4 February 1944, then to the USS Henrico (APA-45), and then to the USS Polana (AKA-35) on 21 February 1945 until 25 September 1945 (RM1c (T)). (Based on quick look-ups of these ships, both the Barnett and the Henrico were involved with the Allied invasion at Normandy, and I’m pretty sure this is Meyer, at 95, talking about that experience. )
In 1946 or 1947, Meyer married Minnie Baum, who along with her sister Sara had come to the United States from South Africa.*** Irwin and Minnie had a son, Stewart, in November of 1947, and at the time of the 1950 United States Census, they were living with Sara and her husband, Reuben Gale, and their son.
Sometime in the 1970s, Irwin took over as bandleader of the Kings County American Legion Headquarters Band, a position he held until his death in May of 2015 when he was struck by a car. A month later, the New York Times ran a feature about him.
Harold Eugene Clift, S2c, was born in Staten Island New York on 9 October 1919. His parents were Harold Lazell Clift, who worked for the Daily News in its Delivery Department, and Elaire “Elsie” Wheeler Clift, a “saleswoman” in the “soda, candy” business. Harold enlisted on 4 November 1937 and was a member of the New York National Guard when he was assigned to the Zircon. After he was transferred from the Zircon on 11 April 1941, Clift was assigned to the USS Wassuc (CMC-3), where after a month of being reported as Absent Over Leave and considered a deserter. I don’t know what repercussions he faced as I can find no other documentation of his service. On 31 March 1945, he married Marion Cafaro and they had four children: Patricia, Thomas, Diane, and Mary. He worked as an insurance claims adjuster for twenty-five years, until he died in 1971.
Thomas Frank Fiorini, S2c, another native of Staten Island, New York, was born 5 July 1920. His father, Dominico (“Dominick”) Fiorini emigrated to the United States in 1912 when he was 15, and worked in a soap factory as well as, later, with the U. S. Government in Tompkinsville. Thomas had a brother, Louis J., and a sister, Marie A.
Senior portrait, Port Richmond High School, 1938
I found two very different enlistment dates for Fiorini… 19 August 1937, which appears on the Zircon’s 7 April 1941 Report of Changes (as well as other ships’ muster rolls), and that which appears on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File—27 January 1941. That seems odd to me, especially since he served on the USS Leary (DD-158) for two weeks, on the USS Wyoming for about a month in 1939, and on the USS Reuben James (DD-245)**** for two weeks in September of 1940 (temporary duty/training) before being assigned to the Zircon. Perhaps the latter is a RE-enlistment? After his duty on the Zircon, he served for almost seven months on the USS Wassuc (CMC-3) and received a rating upgrade to S1c before being transferred to the Brooklyn Naval Hospital on 12 December 1941 (no details noted). He was discharged in April of 1942. Interestingly, neither the Wassuc nor the Zircon are mentioned on papers involving his discharge, which I obtained from the National Archives, but some kind of physical disability is noted.
Fiorini married Francesca (“Frances”) A. La Vista on 27 August 1949, but I have no further knowledge of what became of him after that—where he worked or if he had kids—other than that it appears he lived in Manhattan for some—if not all—of the rest of his life. He died at 61 on 29 November 1984.
George Richard Kaufmann, Jr., S2c, was born in Staten Island to George Richard and Maria Reina Dexheimer Kaufmann on 26 August 1917. He enlisted in the New York National Guard 1 August 1940, and like Thomas Fiorini, he did fourteen days training duty on the USS Reuben James before reporting for his temporary assignment aboard the Zircon. I could find no additional naval service for him after his Zircon stint, but he enlisted in the Army on 28 September 1942, and served with the 93rd Airdrome Squadron, Army Air Corps. Kaufmann married Gladys Esther Lunberg in 1960 but they had no children. In 1940, George was a Junior Clerk with an insurance company, and after the war, he worked his way up to Supervisor at Metropolitan Life. Along the way, he moved to Rutherford and Monroe Township, New Jersey, where he died 20 September 2007 at ninety years of age.
Frank Joseph Strakosch, S2c, was born to Franz Joseph Strakosch and Salome Henrietta Caroline Kappe on 17 August 1919 in the Whitestone area of Queens, New York City, and was the oldest of three boys. His brothers, George Robert and Walter William were born in 1924 and 1928, respectively. Strakosch enlisted in the New York National Guard on 5 September 1940, but I could find no additional records with regards to naval service. And as with George Kaufmann, he enlisted in the Army on 19 March 1942. I’m uncertain as to when he married Irene Frances Wilks, but it appears that they had a son, Douglas Robert, in 1948 according the the 1950 U.S. Census, and was working as a Firefighter for the New York Fire Department. I managed to find one news article about a fire in College Point, New York, in which he was taken to the hospital for injuries related to putting out the blaze. Strakosch died 3 January 2006. He was 86.
Theodore Charles Metzing, Jr., S2c, was born in Brooklyn, New York on 11 February 1922 to Theodore Charles, a milkman for Borden’s, and Marie A. Ruegg Metzing. In 1940, Theodore was considered a “new worker” on the census, so I’m guessing he was a general laborer, but not long after the census—as with a number of the others I’ve written about here—he enlisted in the New York National Guard—on 16 July 1940. After his two-week training period on the Zircon, I wonder if he was assigned stateside, as I could find no additional muster rolls on which his name appears (which could be a transcription thing as much as anything else) and he was discharged on 20 April 1944.
On 22 June 1946, Metzing married Edna Alberta Fuchs, and they had three boys, Theodore III, Kenneth Walter, and Gerard Eugene, in 1947, 1953, and 1956, respectively. According to the 1950 U.S. Census, Metzing was a Postal Transportation Clerk. He died 11 December 1985 in Deland, Florida, where he moved after retirement.
John Francis Ronkovitz, S2c, was born in Trenton, New Jersey on 26 October 1921 to Frank Rudolph Ronkovitz and Gustina “Justine” Johanna Pariza, an Austrian emigrée. Rudolph, a machinist, moved his family from Trenton to Staten Island’s Mariners Harbor area, where John, a department store clerk at the time, enlisted in the New York National Guard on 24 October 1940, a little more than five months before he came aboard the Zircon.
1953, NYU
From the time he left the Zircon on 14 April until his name appears on other ships’ muster rolls is a span of over three years, which again, I guess I have to attribute to either stateside service or documents not being available or not yet transcribed or some combination of all three. That said, he was received aboard the USS Melville (AD-2) on 23 May 1944, shortly before D-Day, and according to the Report of Changes, he had been stationed at the United States Navy Advanced Amphibious Base (USNAAB) in Falmouth, England, so perhaps that explains his absence from muster rolls. His rating at this point was Radioman, First Class (RM1c), so he had to have attended radio school at some point, no? On 4 June 1945, he was transferred to the U.S. Naval Amphibious Receiving Base (USNARB) at, I think, Plymouth, England, for future transfer to Norfolk, Virginia for additional training. He was transferred to the “Reserve Naval Training Ships” and in September of 1947, it appears that he re-enlisted through September of 1950.
On 1 July 1950, he married June Rae Kolnacki, who at the time was a secretary at an insurance company. (I can’t help but wonder if she crossed paths with either Harold Clift or George Kaufmann.) John and June had three daughters: Jean, Joanne, and Julia. In 1953, Ronkovitz obtained a degree in Engineering from NYU, and in 1979, he retired after thirty years as a systems analyst. He died just two years later, on 31 May 1981.
Burton Sandiford Evans, F3c, was also born in Staten Island, on 18 May 1922. His father, Sidney J. Evans appeared to have worked a number of jobs from 1920 to 1940; his mother was a “Matron” at a theatre in 1940. Evans enlisted in the New York National Guard on 29 February 1940, and on 7 September 1940, he was received aboard the USS Hamilton for “Passage to USS ROPER (at rendezvous) for 2 weeks training duty with pay.” I couldn’t find a Report of Changes which noted he’d been transferred to the Roper, nor did I find his name on any of the Roper’s Reports of Changes or Muster Rolls.
1943, U.S. Department of Commerce
One of two sailors in this contingent that had the rating of Fireman, Third Class, Evans was aboard the Zircon until 15 April 1941, but he would be the only one of this group that would return to the ship in any capacity. He was received aboard again on 24 June 1940 and would serve aboard the Zircon until 10 March 1943, after which he was transferred “to inactive duty.” During this stint, he was promoted twice—to F2c in January of 1942, and to F1c in September of that year. There are no other records of his service aboard Navy vessels after that, but Evans was a Junior Third Assistant Engineer aboard a couple of merchant ships—the American Manufacturer which departed Liverpool, England on 24 March 1944 and arrived in New York on 17 April; and the SS Exminster, which left Barry, Wales on 18 September 1944 and arrived in New York on the 30th. He was discharged from the Navy on 21 October 1944, so I’m guessing that his reserve status allowed him to work in the Merchant Marines prior to his discharge.
United States Maritime Service Training Station (circa 1945)*****
On 23 April 1945, Evans was certified as a junior grade Lieutenant in the United States Maritime Service. On 27 August 1962, he married****** Marion W. Koehler in Greenwich, Connecticut, and they moved to Nashua, New Hampshire in 1982. Evans worked for the Veterans Administration from 1947 to 1981, where he served in the engineering departments in Veterans Administration hospitals in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, New York. He died in Manchester, New Hampshire on 10 March 2001. He and Marion had no children.
Robert John Hendricks, F3c… There were two sailors I found via Ancestry’s military records with this name. One was born in Wisconsin, and the other was born in Yonkers, New York. According to the ship’s Report of Changes that mentions his reporting for duty indicates that he enlisted in New York, I think it’s a very short leap to assume I’ve got the right guy. I’ve sent a note to his late son’s widow who said she’d try to find out for me, so perhaps she’ll be able to confirm it for me soon.
Robert’s father, Joseph A. Hendricks (Hingyos), was a first-generation Hungarian, and Anna Kovalyjk/Kovalik Hendricks was a Czechoslovakian who had emigrated with her parents from Austria-Hungary. Joseph was a milkman for Borden’s and Anna was a weaver. Robert was born in Yonkers, New York on 5 December 1923, the seventh of eight children.
I could find no information about where he attended high school, but since he was received aboard the Zircon in April of 1941, he had to have enlisted not long after graduating (likely in September of 1940*******), as he would have been only about four months past his eighteenth birthday.
In addition to his temporary assignment aboard the Zircon, he served on the USS Thurston (AP-77) for exactly one year, from 22 September 1942 to 22 September 1943, when he was transferred to the Naval Hospital in St. Albans, New York. I’m unable to determine when he was discharged from the Navy, He married Agnes Mary Ulciny on 8 December 1943 and had four children, Robert, Jr., Gary, Dennis, and Donna. According to his obituary, he was a police officer for twenty-five years in Hawthorne, New York, retired to Poughkeepsie, then after Agnes died in in 1997, he moved to Hollywood, Florida, where he died three years later, on 10 August 2000.
*I went through my spreadsheet and took a look at most of the men who had enlisted in Tompkinsville, Staten Island, and found that all except one had a 402 (most of them) or 403 prefix on their service numbers, so I have a feeling that the locale of enlistment has something to do with it. The prefix of my dad’s service number was 647 and he enlisted in New York, but not knowing where in New York that was, I can’t quite draw any conclusions. Also, there is the factor that my dad was not a native New Yorker… so did that have anything to do with it?
**I’m 99% sure Whitten’s middle name is Edward. The deck log and Reports of Changes on which I found his name only include his middle initial.
***This was somewhat of a wild ride down the rabbit hole! Reuben Gale was born in Clinton, Massachusetts in 1898. His father Abram, who had emigrated from Russia, traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa apparently for something related to silver mining, and in 1908, he sent for Reuben, 10, to join him. Reuben eventually took work as a “cyanide learner,” which I think is another term for a cyanide assayer. (I wasn’t aware that cyanide is used in the extraction of both silver and gold from their respective ores.) In July of 1922, Reuben had to re-apply for permanent residency in the United States as he had been out of the country for fourteen years. It’s my assumption that he met Sara Baum while in South Africa and that they decided to get married and live in the United States, and Minnie came along.
****More about the Reuben James later.
*****I can’t pick Evans out in this photo. He might be the officer in the front center as I believe that was the year he was commissioned as a Lieutenant (j.g.).
******On Evans’s draft registration card, in the space for “Name And Address of Person Who Will Always Know Your Address, Audrey Evans is written in, along with the same address at which Evans lived, so there is a possibility that he was married once prior to 1962.
*******One of the muster rolls from the USS Thurston indicates he’d enlisted on 15 September 1942, but that had to be a re-enlistment since his first date aboard the Zircon was 3 April 1941. So, I have to guess that 15 September marked his two-year enlistment anniversary.
I come across quite a few things of interest as I go through the Zircon‘s deck logs. Recently, while trying to track Jack Joseph Edward’s history aboard the ship, I came across this entry…
Zircon deck log entry, 27 February 1943
I’ve seen many references to sailors having gone absent over leave (AOL) in many of the entries from the deck logs, and I’ve seen many, many entries regarding the transportation of sailors or officers from one ship or naval base to another (which I will post about soon), but this is the first time I’ve seen a reference to “Prisoner Status” for anyone. It’s noted on both the deck log and Report of Changes for 27 February 1943. And because I’m nothing if not curious, I couldn’t help but look up this Michael Gene Puchinsky fellow, while at the same time not wanting to do too deep a dive on him since he wasn’t a Zircon sailor.
So, quickly (relatively speaking)…
Puchinsky was born 20 March 1920 in Bayonne, New Jersey to Vera (Mary) Sofranek, 25, and Joseph (Osip) Puchinsky, 36. According to a profile I found at Ancestry, he worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps when he was 17.
Michael Geen Puchinsky’s Draft Registration Card
On 16 December 1941, he enlisted in the Navy and served on the USS Bristol (DD-453) from 10 January 1942 to 22 October 1942 when he was transferred to the receiving station in Boston. Notes on the Report of Changes suggest that it was a discipline-related.
Michael Gene Puchinsky
He shows up on a Report of Changes for the USS Aquila (AK-47), upon which he was received 8 February 1943, apparently for transportation to Guantánamo, Cuba, but I found no subsequent Report of Changes which records his transfer from that ship. As noted above, he was received aboard the Zircon with “Prisoner Status” on the 27th of February, and was transferred on the 8th of March..
Whatever his transgression and punishment, he returned to active duty* aboard the USS Willis (DE-395) on 29 April 1944. He would serve his longest stint on the Willis, transferring off the ship in San Francisco on 18 August 1945, and he was discharged 14 September 1945 with the rating of Seaman, First Class (S1c). After the war, he married Bertha M. Lechner and lived with her and their two sons—Richard and James—in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Michael and Bertha Lechner Puchinsky
As I mentioned, Puchinsky’s “Prisoner Status” is what piqued my curiosity. Perhaps I was expecting to find a series of articles depicting him as a lifetime miscreant, and maybe if I had, I would have left it at that. Searches I’ve made for other Zircon sailors have yielded all sorts of oddities, tragedies, and triumphs, along with a lot of many ordinary lives, and despite this gamut of people’s experiences, I guess I’m never really ready for certain things, especially when only one search result comes up.
Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, 9 May 1957
That Puchinsky had been living alone in a trailer for five months suggests that he was estranged from his wife, particularly given—according to his death certificate—that the site of the trailer park was only a thirteen-minute drive from where his family was living at the time.
*It’s possible that he served on other ships between February of 1943 and April of 1944, but I found no record of it.
In the nearly ten years I’ve been researching the many aspects of the USS Zircon (PY-16)—from its days as a millionaire’s luxury yacht to its days as a, uh… millionaire’s luxury yacht—my main source of direct knowledge of the ship and the YF-415 disaster, which prompted my research, has been Isidore “Teddy” Bertone. I’ve also talked with my mom’s brother, Skip, who had conversations with my dad about his service in general, and the YF-415 incident specifically. Beyond that, most of what I know has come from newspaper articles and documents I’ve obtained either from the National Archives or via Ancestry/Fold3.
In 2015, when I was back in the Midwest to work at the now-defunct Great Lakes Folk Festival, as well as to attend a reunion of people who had attended Good Shepherd School on the East Side of Toledo (just prior to the diocese shutting down the parish), I visited my dad’s sister Gertrude, who as I write this is his last surviving sibling (and, I hate to say, not doing well). Gert was born almost seven years after my dad, so when he was in the Navy (age 24 to 27), she was but 17 to 20, so still pretty young. When I asked her about his history in the service, she couldn’t tell me much except for a time that she visited him and my mom in New York not long after they’d gotten married, which actually would have been after he left the Navy.
But one thing she did recall was that their mom had been in touch with a local Toledo newspaper with regard to Dad’s having been awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his role in the rescue of the YF-415 sailors. She couldn’t give me any specifics about when or where the article would have appeared, however, so I didn’t have a clue as to how to find it. There were at least two daily newspapers in Toledo in 1944, The Blade and the Toledo Times, as well as (I think) The East Side Sun, which was dedicated to East Toledo. I figured that I’d have to spend hour upon hour in the main library’s microfiche/microfilm room searching through several years’ worth of newspapers, and even then, the chances of not finding it were high. Also… I live in San Francisco!
A couple of weeks ago, however, I figured out how to search Google’s newspaper archives, something which—for reasons I can’t explain because I’m generally pretty web savvy—had eluded me for all the time I’d known about the archives. Lo and behold, when I did a search for Dad’s name, an article from The Blade came up from Tuesday, 26 December 1944.
via Google Newspapers
Google’s scan of the article, however, wasn’t all that great, as you can see, so I contacted a librarian at the Toledo-Lucas County Library from whom I’d received some other information recently about obituaries for high school classmates of mine. I asked her if there were a chance that the library would be able to pull a better copy of the story from their microfiche. In her reply, she said that yes, a better copy probably could be pulled, but that the library maintained a clippings file of World War II articles which had local interest, and attached to the email was this…
For the longest time, I had no idea who the fellow on the left side of this photo was. This is one of five photographs in which he appears amongst the twenty-three photos taken at my parents’ wedding, on 20 January 1945. I knew him only as my dad’s best man.
No names appear on the back of the photos. No names were written on the pages of the album that the photos once occupied. I recall that the album had a deep wine-coloured covered and was bound with rivet-like posts—two or maybe three of them—and I seem to recall a decorative cord. The pages were black (like construction paper) and the photos were held to them with photo mounting corners.
On my parents’ Certificate of Marriage, the Witnesses’ names identified Dad’s Best Man as John Gigarten.
Mom and Dad’s Certificate of Marriage
For as long as I’ve had the Certificate of Marriage, I had never paid much attention to the writing on it. I had always assumed that the Witnesses’ names were signatures. Therefore, why would someone not spell his name correctly. Of course, had I taken the time to scrutinize the document just a wee bit, I would have noticed that the handwriting was identical. It’s possible that Gladys, mom’s best friend and Maid of Honour, had written the names in. Maybe Mom did, although the handwriting doesn’t quite look like hers. The priest perhaps? Someone in the church’s office?
I’ll never know, of course.
Years ago, when the internet was still rather in its infancy, I had a trial account at Ancestry, and I searched for John Gigarten in Ancestry’s database. Nothing. Not one single result came up. I probably even used my pre-Google search engine of the day, AltaVista. Nada. It seemed that there was not a human being on the planet with the name Gigarten. It never occurred to me at the time that the name was misspelled because again, I had assumed—without close scrutiny—that he signed the document and how is it possible that he would have written the wrong name? It was nothing short of baffling.
Fast forward to October of 2017…
I had work in Boston photographing a conference, so while I was there, I visited the YF-415 memorial for the Black sailors who were killed in that disaster, which is on the site of the former Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot (now Bare Cove Park), and later that day met the divers who discovered the wreckage of the YF-415 in 2002. (It was a weird coincidence that one of the divers, Bob Foster, attended Bowling Green State University at the same time I had, and that we had a mutual friend.) When the conference was over, I took a train to New York so that I could meet one of my dad’s ship mates, Isidore “Teddy” Bertone, who has been a driving force for this research project of mine. We met while a videographer recorded our meeting. While Teddy and I talked, I showed him my parents’ wedding pictures and when the above picture of my dad and his best man came up, Teddy excitedly exclaimed, “Chick!”
He explained that “Chick” was a cook on the Zircon, and then showed me a picture from shipmate Frank DeRupo’s wedding—”Chick” was the same guy in my parents wedding pictures! He was DeRupo’s best man, too. In all likelihood, “Chick” was probably a really great guy, but I’ve also wondered if maybe he was so popular because he was the ship’s cook (SC1c) and no one wanted to get on his bad side. I also wonder how many times he served as someone’s best man.
Sailors (from left): unknown, Teddy Bertone, Frank DeRupo, Gigarjian, Anthony Susinno, Mario Saponaro
When I returned from the trip, I began in earnest seeking out more living Zircon sailors. Because the YF-415 disaster was forefront in my mind with regard to the information I was seeking, I downloaded all of the Zircon’s Muster Rolls and Reports of Changes and set about trying to figure out who was aboard the Zircon on 11 May 1944. As I created my spreadsheet, I came across the name Gigarjian on one of the muster rolls, and a light went on.
So “Gigarten” was probably due to someone having misheard a name. Or perhaps my mom and dad weren’t familiar enough with John to know how he actually spelled his name, despite that Dad had spent two years with him aboard the Zircon, so took a guess without asking him. Maybe my dad always thought his name was Gigarten.
My older brother Mike, who has been working on our family’s genealogical history for probably twenty years created a “family tree” of Zircon and YF-415 crew members using his Ancestry account. He made a profile for Gigarjian within the tree, and I uploaded the wedding photographs I have of him to the profile. Not long after that, we received a note from one of Gigarjian’s daughter’s with regard to the photographs as she had never seen them before. It occurred to me then to create a Facebook group where we could come together to share photos, stories, documents… anything related to our fathers’ service on the Zircon. As of today, the group has about 170 members representing about a quarter or so of the 400-plus sailors that served on the ship at one point during its five-year commission.
Living in these times with the internet, it’s easy to forget the days when getting in touch with someone who lived a thousand miles away was either a chore (writing letters) or a major expense (long-distance telephone calls). I recall well my mom’s frugality with regards to household expenses. For example, once I traveled to Chicago alone, and Mom wanted me to call her collect when I got there. She would refuse the call, of course, as she only wanted to know that I arrived OK.
So it probably was with my dad and his former ship mates. The cheaper long-distance rates didn’t kick in until after 11:00 P.M. on weekdays, and as my dad rarely stayed up beyond 11:30 (he’d hit the sack after watching the local news), it’s unlikely he would have called Chick. I believe that the same rates applied to the weekends, so it’s possible that if Dad had wanted to catch up with Chick or anyone else he’d served with, he would have done it at that time, but I just don’t recall him ever spending that much time on the phone with anyone. Besides, nine months out of the year, his weekends were spent either playing golf or watching it (and baseball) on television.
On Sunday, 25 March 1945, a dinner commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Zircon’s commissioning was held at a rooftop banquet room at Hotel St. George in Brooklyn, New York, not far from the Navy Pier. I have no idea if the entire crew was allowed to attend. I assume that with the war in Europe winding down—Victory in Europe Day was less than two months away—the Zircon’s services weren’t urgently needed, so… probably?
The program for the evening included the ship’s entire roster (or “rooster as it reads on the page!), but there’s no way of knowing how many people actually attended.
Program (click for larger version)… I wonder who did the artwork
At the time of the dinner, and as noted on the cover page, four of the ship’s original crew, or Plank Holders (or alternately, Plank Owners), were still with the ship. My dad wasn’t in attendance as he had been transferred from the Zircon to the YMS-75 a couple of months earlier. The number of officers on board by this time had been trimmed to just five:
Lieutenant James Loren Cook, Jr., Commanding Officer Lieutenant Richard Prescott True, Executive Officer Julius George Sills, First Lieutenant Lieutenant Charles Andrew Blocher, Communications Officer Lieutenant (j.g.) Ned Landis Lamprecht, Engineering Officer
Ralph Patrick Annunziata
Francis Lawrence MacDonald
Fausto Plaganas Apostol
Paul Magera
Edward Richard Ausfeldt
Richard Edward Mercer
Edward Babish
Carl Lester Miller
Alvin Edward Barber
Anthony Nigro
William Eugene Barnett
Edwin Lathrope Oakley, Jr.
Richard Roy Beckwith
Thomas Augustine O’Neil
Frank Walter Bernard
Will P. Parker, Jr.
Isidore (“Teddy”) Bertone
Walter Leo Parks
Frank Paul Bielskis
Ardrey Vernon Peyton
Richard Harold Blust
William Ganeric Petrushonis
Otto Martin Boerner
James William Plant, Jr.
James Rudolph Burton
Louis Rene Richards
Raymond Butler
James Michael Riley
Raymond Francis Carpenter
Irwin Rubin
Charles LaVern Damon
Angel Louis Ruiz
Charles Brant Deer
Tommie Rush, Jr.
Frank Nicholas DeRupo
William Richard Salomons, Jr.
Max Earl Dey
Mario Patrick Saponaro
Arlo Eugene Ellis
Peter Anthony Schmanski
Pete Richard Federoff
George Preston Seybolt
Richard Hamilton Garrison
Isiah Smith
John Gigarjian
Lasal Smith
Buford Aubry Griggs
Theodore Soltys
Louis Harper, Jr.
Harrison Stone
Odis Henderson
Anthony Charles Susinno
Joseph Ovila Huard
Leonard Francis Therrien
Joseph Henry Hoser, Jr.
Elster Johannessen Tufte
George Waldo Humphrey
William Walter Turney
Daniel Frederick Hurley
Lester Burton Wood
Rinaldo Biagio Iannettone
Ira LaFlorrid Zeek
Lonnie Johnson
Sailors I’ve been able to identify are in bold
A photograph was taken that evening by Knickerbocker Pictures, which appears either to have had a contract with Hotel St. George or was simply the photographer of choice by the hotel’s events coordinator, as I’ve seen several group photos on eBay which were taken at the hotel and had the Knickerbocker imprint on them.
4th Commissioning Anniversary Dinner (click for larger version)
When I received the group photograph to scan, I hadn’t paid much attention to the date, so I thought perhaps my dad was amongst the crowd. As my eyes went from face to face, I was disappointed to not see his, but my jaw dropped when I saw the face of my mom’s best friend, Gladys Osier, who attended the dinner with Dad’s Best Man, John Gigarjian. I would later confirm with Gladys, who was Mom’s Maid of Honour, that the two of them went out a few times after my parents’ wedding.
Considering the number of sailors on the roster versus the number of sailors in the photograph, I’m guessing that it was taken late in the evening after people had left. Also, there are more officers in the photograph that appear on the roster, so it might not have been a completely closed event. Perhaps past and/or future officers were in attendance?
Noticeably absent are the Stewards: Apostol, Ellis, Henderson, Johnson, Parker, Parks, the Smiths (Isiah and Lasal), and Stone.
If you recognize someone in the photograph that hasn’t yet been identified, please get in touch. Likewise if you happen to have a copy of the photograph that’s in better condition, as the creases in this one make it somewhat difficult to identify a few people.
Vintage promotional postcard for the Hotel St. George
Program and group photograph courtesy of Linda Oakley Letendre.
When I began to write this post, I thought there was no one in John Gay’s family with whom I would be able to get in touch. That was because for the longest time, I had believed his name had a middle initial—G. I’m not sure where I had come up with the initial because Gay’s name does not appear on any of the muster rolls or deck logs that I had at the time I added him to my spreadsheet. I only discovered that he was an officer aboard the Zircon after receiving a bunch of photographs from the son of Arthur Fleming Drant (F2c), who’d served on the Zircon from the day it was commissioned on 25 March 1941 until 23 February 1942. Gay’s name was written on the back of a few of the photographs.
John G. Gay, Lieutenant Charles Frederick Havemeyer
I think that the G came from a news clipping I’d found in a Pennsylvania newspaper which announced on its society page that a John G. Gay had been accepted by the Naval Academy in Annapolis. It was the only such news item I had found for John Gay at that time. Simply put, I conflated one John Gay with the other because… the Naval Academy. With few exceptions, very little information about a ship’s officers is available via muster rolls, so it wasn’t until I obtained a tranche of deck logs that I found his name listed as the Zircon’s Communications Officer.
28 February 1942 deck log’s List of Officers
This process of trying to locate over four hundred Zircon families requires a little persistence. Failure is almost the norm. When I feel I’ve gone as far as I can go with someone, I move on to the next person on the spreadsheet. Eventually, I work my way back around to those that I had reached dead ends with earlier (I can’t count how many times I’ve been through the spreadsheet).
Gay (left) with Ensign Julius Peter Wilkowski*
I can only hope that in repeating the process, sources such as Newspapers.com or GenealogyBank,com might have “new” information for me. Also, as more and more people create family trees at Ancestry, additional and (often) more reliable information becomes available, and in some cases, there are photographs, as I recently discovered while looking for Sylvester Craven, who was a Chief Commissary Steward in 1941 and 1942.
With Gay, however, I was stymied… for a long time. A week or so ago, though, I came across a Draft Registration card of one John G. Gay, who was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, and I thought I’d at last hit paydirt. I wondered, though, if an immigrant would have so quickly risen through the ranks to Ensign, especially as there was virtually zero military documentation besides the Draft Registration card. As I looked into his family history, I found no survivors. He had one son who’d died young, and another who died but had no children. I started writing, however, thinking that he was the guy, despite my gut feelings.
Wilkowski (knee), Ensign Ed Thorne, Ensign William Dommerich, and Gay behind Lieutenant Commander Cornelius Martin Sullivan
But then, I discovered a Findagrave memorial for John Gay—with no initial—that had an obituary included in the description. Everything in the obituary seemed to line up with the guy I was looking for. There was no middle initial on the memorial, but that’s pretty common as people create pages based only on what’s on the gravestone, and sometimes, gravestones don’t include initials. And then, I found a duplicate memorial that had identical birth and death information, no obituary, but with links to other family members. I got a little giddy thinking that my mystery had been solved.
Using the birth and death dates, I was able to find a tree at Ancestry which included an image of his obituary, which I probably would have found had I not been searching for John G. Gay. With the information about his surviving family members, I was able to find an email address that worked for his daughter Phyllis, and she confirmed I’d found the right John Gay. But, she informed me, “(h)e was always known to us children as John Gay, there wasn’t a G for a middle name.”
Gay (left) again with Wilkowski
A case in point regarding new information becoming available throughout the course of this project, I’m 99.999999% certain that when I began to look for Gay in Ancestry’s military documents a few years ago, I didn’t come across his Draft Registration card. Discovering it now, I see that he registered in New York, which I believe only recently made these documents available.
Gay’s Draft Registration card
The obituary I found at Ancestry (and then Newspapers.com) was published in the Boston Globe, and it differs from what I found on Findagrave in that it’s pretty bare bones. The latter was published in the Southampton Press (which I obtained thanks to a librarian at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton) and provided a brief but good sketch of Gay’s life:
The Boston Globe version indicated that he’d died after a long illness, but did not mention that he’d been hit by a car.
Boston Globe, 18 July 1996
Gay was born in Boston 10 April 1915 to William Otis Gay and Annie Margaretta Dumaresq, and as noted in the obituary, he had six siblings: Sophie Margaretta, William Otis, Dorothea Ellen, Philip Dumaresq, Anne, and Colette.
His family is delineated in Colonial Families of the United States, which was published before Colette was born in 1921.
Colonial Families of the United States
Getting back to his service… he was Communications Officer on the Zircon from 30 August 1941 until sometime in 1942 (since I don’t yet have all the ship’s deck logs, I currently don’t know his detachment date), after which he was promoted to Lieutenant (j.g.) and assigned Commanding Officer of the Sub Chaser, CS-682, at the Submarine Chaser Training Center (SCTC) in Miami, Florida.
The above Report of Changes from 31 December 1942 seems to indicate that the SC-682 was commissioned on 9 January 1942, but I found no muster rolls from before the December date.
Later that year, he reported on the destroyer USS Sturtevant (DE-239) as its Executive Officer, and served for about seven months. Interestingly, the History of the Sturtevant gives him a middle initial… G.
History of the USS Sturtevant (DE-239)
Phyllis said that her father never spoke of his time in the Navy, that “he was badly affected by the war” and likely suffered from PTSD. But… once the family got a television, “he was crazy about watching Victory at Sea.“
Post-war, Gay went back to working on Wall Street, an occupation which appears to have run in the family, as both his father and oldest brother worked in world of banking and finance.
*Wilkowski would later legally change his name to Peter J. Wills.
Isidore “Teddy” Bertone, 16 October 2017, Staten Island, New York
My Father Served On The USS Zircon (PY-16) 