On March 22, 1967, I reported as Third Mate to the Captain of the SS Remsen Heights in Oakland, California. During the next week or so, we loaded ammunition, food, and beer for our troops in Vietnam. On the day we were scheduled to set sail out of San Francisco, I called Nancy and proposed. That was April 1st, more popularly known as April Fool's Day. She said yes, and I sailed off arriving in Yokohama Harbor, Japan, some weeks later. Nancy says it was 6 weeks before she received a letter confirming my proposal. It must have been a long 6 weeks since any number of people reminded her that it was, after all, April Fool's Day. [Editor's note: Nancy says that she cried during our phone call because she thought my proposal was a cruel April Fool's joke. I apparently convinced her that it wasn't a joke, which tends to change the idea that the 6 weeks mentioned above were "long". Hmmm.] [July 2020 Editor's note 2: Going through Nancy's stack of letters shows that I actually mailed a letter dated April 2 which acknowledged my proposal.]

We sailed from Japan to Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, to deliver our supplies to the troops. Not my favorite place in the world at that time, but we did receive double pay while in the war zone. From there we sailed across the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea. We did stop in Singapore to drop off a crew member who injured himself in a fall. We passed through the Suez Canal in late May and docked in Ceuta, Spanish Morocco. The 6-Day War (Israel vs Egypt) started as we left Morocco and ended before we arrived in Bremenhavn, Germany. The important point here is that a number of ships caught in the canal when the war started were trapped for something like 8 years! That was a close call for me, although I'm sure the crews were rotated during that entrapment.

From Germany we sailed to Philadelphia arriving around June 18. My Mother and Nancy drove to Philadelphia, and I got to enjoy their company for a few days. Nancy met my sister Barb for the first time and saw the Remsen Heights from the pier. The Captain didn't allow women on his ship. She also met high school friends George and Carol who lived in Philadelphia at that time. I bought an engagement ring for Nancy during that visit and I set sail on June 23 trusting that I would be back in time for my wedding on September 16.

We sailed through the Panama Canal and up the West Coast to pick up cargo for Vietnam. My one and only official trip around the world was completed when we arrived back in San Francisco. Shortly after that we set sail for Vietnam. Now I began counting the days.

On the return trip, we sailed from Saigon directly to Panama. That trip took 34 days and was, and still is, the longest period of time for me, on the ocean, without sighting land. We started through the canal on September 6, just a 10 days before my wedding. The picture above was taken by me while we were passing through the canal. From there we worked our way around 3 small hurricanes to Georgetown, South Carolina. I signed off the ship on September 11 in Georgetown and 2 days later flew from Charleston to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where Nancy picked me up at the airport, just 72 hours before our wedding. [Another editor's note: Nancy recalls that it took 2 days to get a flight out of Charleston because the airport had been shut down by the hurricanes moving up the coast.]

Only 2 hurdles left. Nancy, remember she's an RN, drew blood that day and passed it to her lab tech friend Sandy for testing; the all-important, pre-wedding blood test. The next day we visited a close family friend of my Mother who was also a judge. He waived the 3-day waiting period normally required before granting a wedding license, and we were home free. The wedding and honeymoon came off as planned. I boarded my next and last merchant ship, the SS Flying Foam, on October 23 and sailed, except for a couple weeks off in March, until August 28, 1968, when I resigned from the merchant marine and entered The Indiana University of Pennsylvania.