New Orleans Reunion - Full Speed Ahead!
Shipmates,
In the past few weeks, Tom and I have contacted many of you personally to try to get a count for New Orleans. We have about 32 positive attendees and about another 10-15 "almost positives". On that basis, I e-mailed the hotel at our 6 month deadline and reserved a block of 40 rooms. In response to that the hotel said they could add a few more rooms at our special reunion rate, for a limited time only.
So, if you haven't already reserved your room, then now's the time! they won't hold the additional rooms for long, so if you want to attend the New Orleans Reunion with some of the best shipmates in the world, then call the hotel today!
In this letter, you'll find a list of "wannabees". Included in the wannabees list are those we have called, but have not actually contacted personally. If your name is inadvertently listed in the wrong group blame Tom and I. We have been comparing our lists over the phone, 1200 miles apart, several times a week, and we do make a few mistakes (Hard to believe).
There are many for whom we had to leave a message who have not returned our calls. So, our count could be a lot higher than 40 rooms. We were actually shooting for 50, but couldn't block that many. Tom and I are "on the hook" for any unsold rooms in our final block.40 plus is obtainable, but 50......maybe not.
This will be our biggest and best reunion to date. We should end up with 40 plus shipmates and, with all additional spouses/friends, our count for banquets and events will be 80+. With those numbers we earn excellent group rates for all our activities. The next newsletter will have all the event details and the registration form.
The next item is a new DEG Association combining all Brooke Class ships. Our Ramsey contact, Nick Previti and I have been discussing a larger Association, which actually would benefit all future reunions. We should all have our reunions at the same site every year, but with separate Saturday Banquets and business meetings. We would command the lowest possible rates on rooms and all reunion events. We could average 150-200 rooms with 250-300 attendees. The DEG Association would be an Association of 6 ships, not individual memberships. It wouldn't need much funding as the Association would exist mainly on paper. Any news concerning the DEG Association could be disseminated through each regular ship's newsletter as an insert. We'll discuss this and our next reunion site at the business meeting in New Orleans.
Wrapping Up.
If you think you might make New Orleans then make your hotel reservation today. Doesn't cost anything to reserve a room. You can always cancel, but you can't always get an $89 room. And remember, you are welcome to invite friends/relatives and reserve more than one room, at least in the next few weeks.
Next newsletter will be out the first week in May and have all the Reunion details.
Steve
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Shipmates,
Greetings to all and I hope your holiday season was filled with joy for you and your families. This edition of “President’s Corner” is being written from somewhere other than home while sitting in front of my computer. As I write this I am in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. It seems that Steve Hunt had asked me to make sure I had my column to him in time for this newsletter and I knew I was going to be “on the road” but could e-mail it to him. It is ironic that I would be putting this together from one of Brooke’s liberty ports on our first WestPac. What I can report is that Kaohsiung has changed as much as San Diego has in the past forty years. For those of you who were able to make the reunion last September and were in San Diego for the first time since your Brooke days, I know you probably marveled at how much “Dago” had changed. Well, Kaohsiung has grown to a major city of over two million people. Long gone are the Golden Dragon Club and pedi-cabs. Now there are fifty story buildings and thousands of motor scooters everywhere.
If you were wondering how I came to be here it is pretty simple. In my current life I work for DOD and am assigned to (forgive me shipmates) the Marine Corps out of Camp Pendleton, CA. I am currently in Taiwan working with the Taiwan Marine Corps setting up a training program for their Marines.
Steve has informed me that our membership renewals are going strong and that we are picking up new members monthly. That is great news! The strength of our Association is in you, the members.
I hope that many of you are making plans to join us in New Orleans in August. This reunion looks like it will be our biggest and best yet! And the great deal we were able to work out with the DoubleTree hotel for rooms can’t be beat. I hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to share the camaraderie with your shipmates while enjoying the many site and sounds of “The Big Easy”, not to mention partaking in some of the finest foods found anywhere in the U.S.
On a closing note I would like to share with you a moment I had a couple of days ago while looking at the dock area where Brooke pulled into Kaohsiung back in 1968. And while most everything had changed I couldn’t get it out of my mind what it was like to be a young sailor on his first WestPac pulling into a strange and exotic port. I remembered the excitement, mystery, and anticipation of going on liberty here. Most of all I remembered my shipmates from those days who shared that moment with me. And that is what our Association is all about. We have the opportunity to connect and share those wonderful memories from our youth.
Again, I look forward to seeing many of you in New Orleans where we will continue to keep Brooke’s memory alive. Until then………
Fair Winds and Following Seas,
Tom Adametz
President
USS Brooke DEG/FFG-1
Association
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The Following Crewmembers Have Indicated They Will attend The Reunion And Have Made Or Will Make Hotel Reservations:
Adametz, Tom - Hunt, Steve - Witt, Richard - Schinn, Duane - Hanna, Jimmy - Harris, Buddy - Shuttleworth, Gene
Turner, Del - Morrow, Billy - Kalaf, Dave - Hamling, Jerry (2 rooms) - Wasielewski, Robert - Precie, Tony (2 rooms)
Garoutte, Michael - Smithlin, Michael - Braccamonte, Jose - Beckius, Jerry - Columbo, George - Gale, Dennis
Prisock, Jesse - Mezzacappa, Carmine - Newman, Gunther - Dawson, Dale (2 rooms) - Rattigan, Jim - Dorow, Bill
Tzope, Ron - Mercer, C. Douglas III - Elfiink, Kathleen - Hunt, Darryl
If you have not yet made your hotel reservations, then please do so in the next week or two to guarantee your special hotel rate of $89 per night!
Our "Wannabee" Reunion Attendees
Include those members not personally contacted due to:
(1) Not home and we left a message.
(2) Number changed and new number unknown.
(3) Unlisted number.
(4) We don't have your phone number on file.
(5) Your number was mixed up with a 900 number and it costs too much to call you.
Allen, David - Apple, Cliff - Apter, Mark - Anderson, Russ - Anamosa, Pat - Atwood, Dusty - Baadte, John
Banks, Gary - Bingel, John - Bynum, Cliff - Bjelland, B.J. - Barnet, Ted - Bartlett, George - Benson, Gary
Colburn, Gary - Crooks, Bob - Daniels, Gerald - DeCastro, Victor - Dunlap, Gene - Esmele, Jamie - Eley, Duane
Farmer, William - Foster, Larry - Franck, Gene - Greybeck, Red - Grimes, Frank - Grover, Stan - Hancock, Bill
Harding, Terry - Harvey, Jeff - Hickenbottom, C.H. - Hines, J.G. - Hixon, Frank - Hunt, William - Johnson, Bill
Kelly, Larry - Kelly, Patrick - Knight, Jerry - Lewis, Gerald - Limbaugh, John - Looker, Jim - Loveless, Jerry
Lipham, Gerald - Mahaffey, Michael - McClain, John - McLaughlin, Patty - Newkirk, Donald - Nugent, Ed
Peebles, Myrom - Pennington, Jesse - Pesta, Thomas - Pointer, Buck - Sarfaty, Dennis - Schaler, Ken
Schultz, LeRoy - Scott, Rex - Shumlas, John - Sopha, Robert - Swistok, Bill - Stewart, Lloyd - Tandang, Joel
Townsend, A.T. - Tremont, Frank - Ulmer, Bill - Velasco, Pete - Vickers, Steve - Walters, Jim - Williams, Pharis
Williams, Wayne - Winchell, Rodney - Wilson, Ed - Whitaker, Larry - Wolfe, Terry - Woolever, Rick
Please call 253-473-6742 or e-mail thehubbahubba@aol.com if you plan to attend- Steve Hunt
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USS Brooke Reunion
New Orleans
August 24th - 28th, 2005
DoubleTree Hotels
Room Rates: $89.00 Single or Dbl. + taxes
Note: Rates are honored 2 days prior and 2 days after reunion
So, come early and stay late! Hotel rates will NEVER be BETTER
For Reservations:
Call 1-800-967-6638 or 1-800-222 TREE (8733)
Space is limited......
Make your reservation TODAY!
Planned events:
Steamboat "Natchez" Jazz
Lunch or Dinner Cruise
D-Day Museum Tour
(Walking distance from Hotel)
Swamp Boat Alligator Cruise/tour
(Pontoon Boats, not Air boats)
2 Dinner banquets and More!
ALL DETAILS IN THE NEXT NEWSLETTER
The DoubleTree Hotel is located in the HEART of New Orleans at the foot of Canal Street. The Riverfront Walk and Mall is next door (Plenty of walking and shopping). Harrah's Casino is right next door and the French Quarter is across the street. We believe it it the BEST location in New Orleans for our reunion!
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“BRIDGE….I.C.!”
Communications from the Vice President
Tony Precie, IC3 03 March 2005
In November 1966, I had already finished IC “A” school in San Diego and just received orders to report to the USS Brooke. I was told she was a brand new ship, the first of her class, and she arrived from Seattle, Washington. I didn’t have an idea what she looked like…I thought to myself, egad! Just another DE, except with missiles…I had served aboard a heavy destroyer, the USS Perkins DD-877, for seven months before going to the sixteen weeks “A” school. The Perkins was 350 feet long and was a long hull Gearing class tin can with two funnels and twin screws…we even had the depth charge racks, K-guns, hedge hogs, and a flight deck for DASH (drone anti-submarine helicopter). I loved the Perkins, it was so low in the water and heavily armed…it looked like a warrior. I could just imagine how much smaller and what a single stack/single screw DEG would physically look like. But, when I first caught a glimpse of her in San Francisco, our Brooke, I was totally caught by surprise. I kind of just stood there and scanned her hull…with the moonlight striking against the guided missile escort…a 414 ½ foot ocean-going first class escort…the steel and aluminum metal glimmering as if wet with sea moisture…the mast and yardarm reaching toward the stars with her aircraft warning lights casting a constant red glow from the truck…sitting so high out of water, a huge sail area on her sides, a clean sharp appearance on deck, with torpedo tubes in her stern! She was beautiful but did appear to be a stark warrior…to me…one MK 22 Tartar Missile launcher, one 5”38, one ASROC launcher, and torpedo tubes… I thought, oh my, the modern navy is going gunless! I wondered about the crew…the chiefs, and the officers… a new ship must be full of “quartermaster” that will need to be polished off…is the ship going to be a sailor’s nightmare of rigidity? The 1944 built Perkins was squared away and always looking sharp with a 37-knot rooster tail that was higher than mount 53…but it was a WWII and Korean War fighting ship, and the brass and chiefs set a close-knit crew with a feeling of trust and competency…and friendship. I was married while assigned to the Perkins… the skipper summoned me to his 03 level stateroom one morning in March 1966 and gave me 9 days basket leave…to get married…and then offered me his access to Special Services for our honeymoon…whatever we needed… when I saw the Brooke, these kind of things went through my mind…what is life aboard the new ship Brooke going to be like?… I realized a new ship, the crew is usually hand picked for their professionalism, bearing, knowledge, and ability, but will it be a tight crew?... a close crew?…after all, I thought, as I stepped from the pier onto the brow… walking toward the quarterdeck…we will, no doubt, go to war together and will need to depend upon each other. Even in the dark, I could see the shore power and the phone service cable…I was taking in the awesome feeling that this is the beginning of what I am sure is going to be an experience of wonder and memories…As I stepped from the brow, I saw an enlisted sailor as the Officer of Deck with the Long Glass, my feet landed upon the quarterdeck at 2200 hours on November 29, 1966, I put my seabag on the deck next to my left leg, stood at attention and saluted while I barked to the OOD, F.E. Mc Coy, Engineman First Class, “Precie, ICFN, reporting as ordered!” I then stretched out my left hand towards the OOD, presenting my orders. EN1 Mc Coy said to me, “Precie, cut that shit out! People are trying to sleep!” I said, “Yes sir!” The OOD then said, “Quiet I said!” He then signed my orders and had the Petty Officer of the Watch enter me into the ship’s logbook…The Sounding & Security Watch was ordered to take me below to the rest of the Engineers in R Division. As I grabbed my seabag and orders, I thought…
Wow!…I am now a member of Ship’s Company…USS Brooke DEG-1. Yes!!
See you all in New Orleans at the Re-Union!
Anthony A. Precie
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Regular Membership dues to the Association are $25 per year. Associate membership (no fee) is available for all surviving spouses of Brooke Crewmembers.
Your current membership expiration date is to the right of your name on the address label on the newsletter. To continue "Port & Starboard" please remit your dues payment in accordance with published dues schedule, payable to the USS Brooke Association and mail to our Treasurer at the address below:
Steve HuntUSS Brooke DEG/FFG-1
P.O. Box 1692
Tacoma, WA 98401
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