Memo To: All The Baseball Fans

So far the only squadron member to report on the Florida hurricanes other than Doc Protheroe is Sandy Hudspeth. 

With no newspapers in operation Sandy was able to get some news from the Ledger Website which had reports on Hains City and Winter Haven. 

The reports covered both Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Charley.  These reports are what we in other parts of the United States were able to observe on TB and utter destruction was the word.

Sandy reported that he and Marie weathered the storm OK.  They lost power for several hours and fortunately even with all the super strong winds their only damage was to a fancy trim board from the front.  Nothing serious though he said.

Doc Protheroe reported that he and Jane have been waiting for a break in the hurricanes so that they could make a short trip to inspect their damaged condo in Punta Gorda.  They had been packed for over a week to leave when they reported in.  If they are able to sneak by Frances they will be in Punta Gorda for a week or ten days.

Robet Yanacek did some G2 and was able to get in touch with Leonard Delvicchio's niece and found out that their home had been destroyed by the hurricane.  They are currently living in their niece's home in Sarasota until such time that their home in Punta Gorda is rebuilt.  They are doing fine, but they lost pretty much everything.

Leonard Delviccio called and confirmed the info in the prior paragraph.  There was no personal suffering experienced.  He was fortunate to be able to reach his insurance agent before the masses of their clients called and they had an early review with insurance adjusters.

Their new edifice will be made much stronger per new state of Florida rules and hopefully they will not have such a hurricane in the near future.

John and Doris Siergiewicz send their best to all.  They received a letter from a Marine in Iraq who is on his second tour.  Johns' niece in St Charles, Mo. sent it to him and he wanted the 613'ers to see what a Marine in Iraq has to say.  It is an attachment to this letter.

Heard from Chuck Cannato who said best to all 613'ers.  He reported that all was well with them at Cape Cod.  He stopped his golf work this season to allow his bad knee to recuperate but still allows time for some golfing in his physical therapy program.

In looking through some pictures he came across some boxing pics when he was one of VMB 613's boxing team members.  The team went up to Roi-Namur to engage in matches with some Navy teams and based upon the scoring techniques the winner would receive a ten day liberty turn to at  Pearl Harbor.

In looking at the opponents he tried to visualize who he would be matched with and Dick Haley convinced him he would be properly matched and not to worry.  He looked around while names were being announced and figured out based on weight, etc who his opponent would be.  He missed in his computation and was matched with one of the biggest opponents at the event. 

Chuck weighed 145 and his opponent weighed 185.  His opponent he thought should be handled by Herb Siegert since their sizes were comparable.

Dick Haley who was in charge of the Boxing Team assured him that he could take the match, almost, it ended up in a draw and no trip to Pearl Harbor.

They are still planning on the move to Connecticut or New York.  The exact timing is contingent on the sale of their Cape Cod home which allows them to evaluate which state to choose for their new residence.

Chuck did say that he was going to call Herb Seigert and do some reminiscing about the boxing team and the squadron in general.

Frank Carthey sends his greetings to all the 613'ers.  They recently attended a concert by the Marine Forces Reserve Band.  They did a terrific job - very enjoyable.  They made him proud and he saw that they originally were from the 4th Wing which brought back memories to him.

For those interested the bands web site address is:

http://www.mfr.usmc.mil/mfrhq/band/index.html

Health wise he isn't as well as he wants, back problem, but manages to get up and move around. 

Heard from Jim and Buzz Packard who send their regards to all.  They left for a trip or a month of so to Oregon and planned to return when the frost is on the pumpkin.

Foster Cummings sends his best to all.  He has spoken to Doc Protheroe who reported that the roof has been fixed on their Florida home.  He and Jane are waiting for a traffic report as to when they will be allowed back to Florida so that they can determine what the rest of the repairs will required.

Foster also said that he had head from Joe and Rita McDonald and that they are continuing to feel better.

John Chappell says hello to all.  He is managing to move around but not the way he used to.

Art Navarre says hello and regards to all.  He is doing well and continues to review some old 613 data that he has, which brings back memories.  At one time a visiting basketball team came through the area, they were members of a Navy ship temporarily in port, and they inquired about the chances of playing a game or two with a local team. 

Frank Robinson heard about it and discussed it with Art.  One of the requirements was a money routine for the winners.  After seeing the visiting "team" Art strongly voiced objection about playing them to Frank for fear that the visitors would make off with a lot of money.  Frank accepted his recommendations hence no game or loss of money.

Doc Protheroe and Jane stopped at Parris Island to partake of lunch.  While there he thought it would be a good time to do a little inspecting of the troops.  They traveled around the base and covered mainside, the huge new indoor training pool and then out to the range.  It was a warm day so he made his formal inspection while in the comfort of the air conditioned car.

He attached two photographs to his letter which showed the quality of the training.  Some of the recruits were so drained while doing the old jogging in place and then hitting the deck that some were struggling to get up when they should have been down while others were hitting the deck when they should have been up.  Talk about exhaustion, Doc said just look at their faces.  Some of the pictures are attached to his newsletter.

Doc and Jane send their regards to all.

Just received another message from Doc and Jane.  It appeared that there was a break in the hurricanes so they were going to try to sneak by France's flank and get to Punta Gorda for a week or so to check out the damage to their condo.

Jim Garls sends his best to all.  Pekin his home town has an annual Marigold Festival which is in progress.  This year he did not keep track of the daily clues in the newspaper so he hesitated about entering.  He hopes that our friends in Florida did not suffer major injuries or property losses due to the hurricanes.

Willis Roose sends his regards to all.  He has become totally confused with the election hoopla so he has made his final decision. 

He plans to vote for Harold Stassen of Minnesota again.  If he is still alive he would be 109 years old with a new wig and a new wife to match.

Lloyd "Mac" Mc Daniel did some research on the picture of the PPJ in the last news letter, the one that said Rita's wagon. 

In the Leatherneck Bombers Book that he has there was a page and picture of a PBJ with the same lettering.  He is going to try and get a Xerox copy of the picture. The picture showed a crew from VMB 443.

There was another picture of a VMB 443 PBJ in the book which had just returned to Hawaii that had the crew members names - they were: John Hanks, co pilot, Al Sullivan, Pilot, Steve Stevermer, radio gunner, John Berardo, Navigator, Make Vakula, mechanic turret gunner and Hugh McCann tail gunner (picture was courtesy of Michael Vakula).

Mac added that the Leatherneck Bombers is a good book, but it had little about VMB 613.  Both the front and rear covers of the book however showed a VMB 613 PBJ-H on strikes over Ponape.  The PBJ-H on the front cover of the book was Lt Love's aircraft and PBJ-H on the rear cover was Lt Hunt's aircraft.

Although the intent to give recognition to VMB 613 was appreciated  some modifications that VMB 613 made to their aircraft at Kwaj didn't show up in the pictures.  Apparently this was an artist's conception of our aircraft.

Mac sends his best to all 613'ers.

Walt Mathesen wrote to say hello and regards to all.  He is still receiving assistance from the Dominican Nuns, he said that they are a blessing in disguise.  He said that his recliner is really getting a work out and he wouldn't be with out it..  The legs can't be counted on but the walker and cane take their place.

Here is some interesting Kwajalein news.  A high speed, multi-million dollar monorail is being built from Roi to Kwajalein.  The exact completion date was not available at the time of this report but it was estimated that the time of the trip will be 40 minutes.  As more information becomes available it will be passed on to all.

Our webmaster, Robert Yanacek, reported that world wide interest continues with our web site.  A visitor from Italy spent over an hour on the web and viewed over 50 different pages.  In addition our website was a discussion topic in an on-line forum for a magazine entitled Fine Scale Modeler.  Already Hasagawa, a model airplane company, released a 1/72 scale kit of a PBJ-1H.

Robert Yanacek was able to have VMB 613 linked to the Kwajalein Community Website.  Shermie Wiehe is their webmaster and was on Kwajalein from 1972-1997.  The address to the Kwaj Website is: http://www.wiehes.com/kwaj.html