Front Row" ETC "Ike" Gamez, FCC Keith Emerson, Me, Captain John Hamilton, DSCM Dale Paige

     This picture was taken shortly after my fourth and final reenlistment by Captain Hamilton in May 1994.  The "crew" you see here made up much of the military component of the COMLOGWESTPAC / FTSCPACDET Singapore units whose mission was quite simply "fixing ships".   You're looking at 200 years of combined navy experience here.  We are the folks who took up the slack of the Subic Bay Ship Repair Unit (SRF), closing when the Navy departed Subic in 1992.  Captain Hamilton was the Commanding Officer of SRF Subic just prior to the closing and came over to COMLOG WESTPAC to establish a ship repair capability in Singapore.  He use to like to joke how in Subic he commanded 4000 while in Singapore he barely had 4 - and of course the mission was the same.

     My favorite Captain Hamilton story goes something like this.  Shortly after our arrival in Singapore we were forced to gap the Seventh Fleet Diving and Salvage Officer billet.  This is typically a Lieutenant Commander billet with a strong marine engineering and Navy Diving/Salvage background.  The replacement Officer was still in school at MIT and wouldn't report for about 10 months.  Well it must have been the day after we gapped the billet when the phone rang and someone needed to speak with the Diving/Salvage Officer.  Captain Hamilton answered the call, put the caller on hold and yelled over to me "Chief, you've got a phone call".   And that was it, spot promotion (or dumping!) based on the mission Vs the manning we had.  I was very intimidated at first as I was not a Navy Diver or Salvage Engineer by any stretch.  I was a fairly advanced sport diver and had worked with Navy Divers on sidescan sonar and salvage missions.  As the next few days passed Captain Hamilton showed me some of the ropes regarding where to find key things in the diving and salvage manuals, who the Pacific Fleet Master Divers were and how they could be reached and so on.  And that was pretty much it.  I held the job for the next 10 months until LCDR Pat Keenan arrived.  I had gotten through it with Captain Hamilton's rudder orders and the expert advice of the network of the Master Divers in Japan, Hawaii and San Diego.  But the real moral of the story here is the confidence that Captain Hamilton held in Chief Petty Officers.  He was convinced a good Chief can do whatever he wants as long as he sets his mind to it.  The 10 months in this hot seat were 10 of the most rewarding of my career.