I hit the jackpot yesterday at the historic Washington Navy Yard. I got access to a copy of the oral history that Mac did with Art Baker twenty-six years ago. It was the very first one that the Office of Naval Intelligence had conducted, and in six interviews, Art got an excellent blow-by-blow on how intelligence evolved between the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, and the grim urgency of the long Cold War that followed. For me, this was a chance to cross reference the dozens of interviews Mac gave me over the decade we hung out at the Willow Bar, or at his place in The Madison, where he moved for the assisted living conveniences after a full life in North Arlington.
Since Art transcribed the Admiral’s commentary as he spoke it, it was not hard to imagine that Mac was speaking to me direct in the cool darkness of the bar, and that a pile of napkins with scribbled notes was in front of me, some of them already bleeding together from the moisture that had condensed on my gllass.
There was something quite extraordinary up front, and it really hit me. This was Mac, speaking to me directly from the past about what we would talk about in the future. He had typed up a list of the orders he executed in his Navy career, with helpful notes. It is his direct, not Art’s nor my interpretation of what he said. Here is what Mac considered to be his Navy career:
I will be pouring over the rest of the transcript to plug a couple holes that I was either too disorganized or inebriated to get straight when I had a chance to ask him in person. But it was a jack-pot kind of day yesterday. I had beeen needing some context on his time at the Schoolhouse in the early 1950s, and what other things he had been doing at CINCPACFLT during the Vietnam conflict.
It is a little eerie. It feels like Mac came back to help me wrap up the project. That is the sort of event that seems almost supernatural, you know?
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
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