(The line for the SRO crowd to enter the Old Chapel at Fort Myer, adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery. Photos Socotra).

I was holding an early glass of sauvignon blanc on the third-floor balcony of the new Army-Navy Country Club House. The new structure consolidated all the separate functions of several older structures at the central golfcourse, and they did it up right.

The old place had grown in random fashion from the old manor house that stood in the middle of what had been a plantation on the bluff above the Potomac before being bought up by a group of military officers who wanted their own place to play golf and tennis and swim in the summer time. The old patio was on the west side of the building and didn’t have much of a view of the Imperial City that sprawls across the river.

The new clubhouse does, by intent, and a splendid way to watch the foursomes finish up on the ninth hole of the Red Course. I was standing with my old shipmate Rich, talking about life, and friendship and death and eternity.

“I know you knew Scotty from the Bad Guys gold group here at Army-Navy,” I said, waiting an average approach shot onto the 9th green.

“Yeah. We had a good couple decades with the Golf and Green Committee. You were with him in Japan, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah, he was the Maintenance Officer in VF-151 on Midway. Iranian Hostage Crisis days. We were friends ever since.”

It had been standing room only at the Old Post Chapel by the time I got there. Living as close as I do to Arlington National Cemetery, I knew exactly how long it would take to get there, and I allowed plenty of time and was still behind most of the crowd of mourners. I wound up standing at the rear of the chapel, since all the pews were filled.

Scotty’s earthly remains were in the hearse out front, his last motorized ride, since he would be transferring to the caisson pulled by the six horses from the Old Guard, the last equine component of the nation’s Army, and perhaps the most dignified.

It is always weird to face mortality. Scotty was a real presence– he never made a friend he didn’t try to keep, all his life. He was a man’s man, smart, funny and a great connoisseur of the better things in life, perhaps because he had seen many of the worst. I was honored to have been his friend.

The weather was perfect for just about any outdoor activity, including this one.

Scotty’s daughter gave a moving eulogy. She kept it together, despite the emotion that at times seemed to overcome her- and there was a moment of exuberant and irreverent humor from the Lieutenant from the Chaplain Corps, who presided over the service.

“As a fighter pilot, Captain Bates was of the elite of the Navy- like the Chaplain Corps.” The Lieutenant was on his game- much of the crowd was composed of Naval Aviators, an audience that appreciates bravado. There was laugher to go along with the tears that welled up in my eyes when the organist pulled out the stops for Eternal Father, Strong to Save.

That darned song gets me every time- and I didn’t realize my high school had appropriated the melody for our Alma Mater song until a church service at Aviation Officer’s Candidate School, where Holy Services got you away from the Marine Drill instructor for an hour on Sunday Morning.

But like I said, I have been to enough of these funerals to have a direct connection to the simultaneous feeling of loss and affirmation when I hear the hymn to the Almighty to protect “those in peril on the sea.”

The honor guard rolled the casket out, followed by the honorary pallbearers, tall guys of a certain age and the gait of former flyers. Being at the back of the chapel we were the last out. Scotty’s casket was on the caisson and the band was finishing another hymn. The cars were already starting to queue up behind the stretch limo for Debbie and the family, and I realized I might just as well walk behind the limo down to the gravesite. It was a great day for a walk.

(Mourners rolling the family in the limousine).

Scotty’s widow Debbie and daughter Kimberly showed a lot of class to the SRO crowd of mourners, and I always appreciate the professionalism of the Navy Honor Guard and the soldier of the 3rd Infantry Division- the Old Guard- who manage the horses and caissons. Now I have to figure out where we walked to so I can find Scotty again in my regular rounds to check up on my shipmates.


Reception after was at the Army-navy Country Club. I had my regulation two glasses of wine, and was talking to Rich before getting a slice of the steamer round and some baked ham.

Rich and I were shipmates back in the Navy, and later co-workers at Big Blue. We are now attempting to come to grips with the post-employment phase of our lives. He looked out over the foursome finishing up on the ninth hole and mused that the funeral of a good friend- someone who had hurtled at mach speed across the firmament- made one confront one’s own mortality.

“I can’t believe he is gone,” I said. “He would have liked the reception.”

“Scotty liked his whole life. Or at least it is like Kimberly said in her eulogy: the list of things he liked was a lot longer than the list of things he didn’t. I am going to miss him a lot.”

“Carpe diem,” I said, and took a sip of the sauvignon blanc, looking down at the ninth green.

(The view of the 9th Green, nestled in the middle of what was Civil War-era Fort Richardson. Scotty liked this hole to finish on the 27 holes at Arlington.)

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303