During the first week of April my wife and I took a cruise which included a stop at the island of Grand Turk. I really wanted to tour the old Navy base
which is now private property "TCI community college". I had been in communication with an employee of the facility and arranged this tour. We arrived on a Sat. so school was not in session I got a great opportunity to walk the site and take some video. Some of the buildings are being used for the school these include the galley/chow hall, the old EM barracks building, the old admin building, and special services building which is used as a hurricane shelter.
The old base is divided by a fence which runs behind the old water storage tanks and near the old transmitter building which is ironically still used as a transmitter building. This area of the old base is utilized by a telecom company for microwave and cell phone service equipment.
I was able to gain access to this area of the base which the employee was not familiar with, the T building is still there and in remarkably good structural shape. I had to beat back an extremely heavy thorn bush growth to gain access to the building but once inside it was a very nostalgic tour, the display room although completely empty was in very good shape, as was the equipment room areas.
Of particular interest was the PA room in the rear of the building on the upper level, I still remember chief Miley spending a lot of time up there we refered to him as "el zappo". He did not take kindly to missed shall I call them items by readers. It was more than 40 years since those days but in the very limited light of the T building many memories were brought back for me.
I will try to forward some of this video of the old buildings to the site in the future.

SC Miley - now that is a name that I haven't heard for a long time. I really enjoyed working for him. Wasn't so sure at first but soon realized he always had the junior OTs best interests in mind, even if we didn't always realize it right off the bat.

Rick,
Ken, had a very soft heart and was a great guy. Although as you said always appeared to be tough. He was a great Senior Chief and WAS harder on the senior folks as you indicated. Do you remember the little cardboard door that was attached to the outside of the OPS office door with a toddlers chair also setting there. Hi was so pi--ed but when he was chewing the culprits out he broke down and started to smile and told us to Get out of his office and remove the little door and chair. Dave and I knew Ken personally and he was truly a wonderful guy. His wife Bertie stopped in to visit Linda and I while we lived in CT after we retired from the Navy. Seems to me it was around 1989 or so and told us he had passed. I guess he had his own vending machine company in Cape May area. I can still see him GRINNING.
Chuck

Chuck,

Yes, I do vaguely remember someone pulling that practical joke but I don't remember who the jokers were.

He was a small guy with a great big heart. I didn't realize he had passed away. I'm sorry to hear that.

Rick

Rick,
The prankster was actually Ben Hamilton, if I am correct, maybe (Cliff Waltz) who was a recently initiated CPO at that time.
Chuck

Ben Hamilton - now that is a name I haven't heard in a long, long time. And Cliff tried to educate a lot of us on the benefits of investing early in mutual funds. Of course I didn't listen with the result being that I am still working

Rick,
Ben has passed away as well so I heard. Cliff sold us (through a investor) a 1 1/4 acre of land in Ocala FL. I still have that property but the county now requires 4 lots to build a home so the value on the lot we have has dropped. Remember Kim Poley???
Chuck

Yes, I do remember him. Do you remember John Zawis? He ended up retiring as a CDR after getting his degree while on A/D, then going to AOCS, ended up working civil service and then retired from the government in JAN this year.

Rick,
Yes I do remember John, he was a very bright guy and didn't care what others thought he had a goal. He was going for his pilots license when we were at BP. Remember Jeff S. who check out on leave from CA and while talking to the OWO the operator asked him to deposit more money!!!
Chuck