March 9, 1973 I put on my dress blues, boarded an Allegany Airlines jet in Buffalo and took a quick flight to Newark Airport. I had a seabag in one hand and my military orders in the other. Keeping my white hat on, toting a seabag and carrying those orders and my personnel file proved to be too much and in the process I left my file on a park a bench at the transit stop in Newark. When I got to the port authority terminal in New York City I realized I didn’t have my the envelope with my orders and files in it. I was frightened but did what I’d been told.
I contacted the port authority police who said, “leave your seabag here son, someone has turned in your orders to us in Newark Airport.” I made the trip back to Newark retrieved the orders and then back to Manhattan and the port authority near Penn Station. The next leg of my journey was to board a subway and get to the Brooklyn Naval Support Activity. I was a 20 year old kid on my own for the first time in New York City. The port authority police pointed me in the right direction. I got on the subway but wasn’t sure how to get Brooklyn and my stop. It was my good fortune to be on the same subway train as a young Hispanic girl who asked if she could help. I told her where I was going and she guided me to the correct stop. She told me to get off the train, go to the top of the stairs and turn right. If memory serves me correctly I was exactly across the street from the Naval Support Activity.
There isn’t a year goes by that I remember her and the kindness she extended helping this greenhorn Navy guy get to the right place.