Everyone’s Life is Extraordinary

Richard “Dickie” Blount – Navy, Husband, Father, Mayor & More….

It may be hidden a bit, but the most well-known celebrity to the average person you know has this thing in common. They have lived an extraordinary life.

It is hard to measure the impact a person may have had on others. Little things, relationships, positive influence, etc. at the right time can absolutely change a life. It may be subtle and take years to fully manifest.  Yes, I am much more cognizant of this now at this stage of my life.  Some maturity and hopefully I now have a bit of wisdom sprinkled in.  

In March my father-in-law passed away.  His past few years, as he aged, he needed quite a bit of help from us.  But he lived only an hour and a half away and we were able to visit him regularly; aid as he needed and continue to be a part of his life.  I met Dickie when I was only nineteen years old.  Uh, that was forty-five years ago!  As he was getting older, I would pepper him with questions about his life.  I did the same with my own parents. I am naturally curious, and I didn’t want their story to die with them.  

I learned that Dickie lived an extraordinary life!  He spent time in the Navy during the cold war.  He coached little league baseball and would pick up kids that would never have been able to play if not for him.  Impactful for sure.  Mayor of a small town.  Husband.  Father. He helped raise two daughters who both became teachers, and they impacted thousands of kids themselves.

Five or six years ago I got an unexpected envelope in the mail from Dickie.  Not addressed to my wife Tina.  I had never received mail from him before. In the envelope was a typed narrative of his time in the Navy and in part, a very specific role that he played.  I asked him why he sent it, and he said, “I thought you would be interested.”   I was.  Very interested.  The cold war.  A different time in some way.  But then as now, young people go into the military and can have an impact.  For all of us.  People like a young man from Gordonsville, Va.  Richard “Dickie” Blount.  He lived an extraordinary life.

Do you know what a “Diddy Bopper” is?  Or how many letters the Russian alphabet has?  Read on.  I have shared his narrative here (below, with some photos I added) in its entirety.   

My Navy enlistment 1956-1960, by Dickie Blount

I joined the Navy in June 1956, two weeks after I graduated from high school. I was sent to Bainbridge, Md for boot camp for eleven weeks, I was rated Seaman Recruit grade E-1. While there I was appointed Battalion clerk due to my typing skills. Upon completion of boot camp, I was rated Seaman Apprentice grade E-2.1 was sent to Communications Technician school in Imperial Beach, Ca.

The first ten weeks were devoted to learning Morse Code and typing. This was called basic school. Nothing unusual. The next twelve weeks was called advanced school and was very unusual. The school was enclosed in a chain length fence and had a guard house to pass through. The typewriters had the Russian alphabet on the keys and there are five more letters in their alphabet then ours. It was a little scary for a country boy, but I survived somehow. I was rated Seaman grade E-3 while there. My class had fourteen members, and all were sent to Adack, Alaska except for myself and one other member. We were sent to March Air Force Base, located at Riverside, Ca., for eight weeks of teletype school.

At March we learned how to operate teletypes, facsimile machines and general procedures used in communications by the Russians. There were eight of us in the Navy in the class. Upon graduation two were sent to Adack, two to Japan, two to Guam and two to Germany. I was sent to Bremerhaven, Germany via Brooklyn, N.Y.  I spent two weeks in Brooklyn and eight days on a MSTS ship, the USS Buckner (pictured below). Not a bad trip as we had no storms. There were 1,500 soldiers aboard. I was glad when we arrived as the accommodation was not like a cruise ship.

I spent two years in Bremerhaven. It was cool and rainy in the summer and cold and snowy in the winter. At least the beer was good. The building I worked in had no windows and Marine guards. We copied Russian naval communications, both land and sea. Most of our intercepts were land based as the only ships they had large enough to have a teletype were cruisers. I ran some faxes, and we intercepted telegrams and weather maps. The telegrams were used to track high ranked military officers. The weather maps told us what the weather was like in Moscow 24 hours a day. Everything was copied on paper and recorded on tape and sent to NSA in Fort George Mead, Md.

Across the hall were the Morse code copiers, we called them diddy boppers. They mostly copied subs but also land base and other ships. Russian subs were required to report in every hour as they did not trust their crews. We used directional finders to pinpoint the whereabouts and tracked them from the east coast to the west. I used to go over and look at the map and see them move the thumb tacks as the subs went on their way. Very interesting.  In the basement we had our voice guys. They copied military aircraft and other voice communications. They had such good equipment they could hear tanks talking to each other in the east zone which was a hundred miles from us. This was a very interesting job to have during the cold war. I was rated Communications Technician third class E-4 while there. When the time came to leave, I was asked if I would like to fly home or go back on a ship. After two years the answer was easy, so I flew. I went on a train to Frankfurt and flew to Mcquire Air Force Base in New Jersey. I was sent to Winter Harbor, Maine for my last year.

At Winter Harbor we copied trawlers and subs. I was assigned communications to and from Moscow – Havana, Moscow – Washington, Havana – Washington and believe it or not, Paris -Washington. We did not trust the French back then. Our base was in the Arcadia National Forest and thirty miles from a town and sixty miles from Bangor. Pretty nasty in the winter. Not a large base and only seven of us in my section lived on base. Chow was good. While there was rated CT2 E-5. When asked to re-up, I was told that I would have to stay another year. No way was I going to stay in a cold ass climate another year.

I enjoyed my four years in the Navy and sometimes wonder if I should have stayed. I look at my wife and two daughters and think I made the right decision. I got to visit Mexico, Canada, Newfoundland, Scotland, The Azores and Germany. Not too bad.