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Welcome to Ken Poorman's Navy Stuff . . .
Basic Training
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California, here I come . . .
Boot
Camp, San Diego:
After I enlisted at
Philadelphia, PA, I went to boot camp at the U.S. Naval Training Center in San Diego, California. I enlisted as an Airman Recruit and hoped to go to Pensacola to train to be an Air Traffic Controller (AC). I also intended to audition for the Navy Band after enlistment. I auditioned with the Bandleader
at the Naval Base San Diego and was eligible to attend the USN School of Music in Washington DC. As graduation neared,
there were no openings at the Air Traffic Controller school for the AC Rating, so I went to the School of Music for the
MU Rating in Washington D.C. instead. Glad I did! So off goes the green stripes and on goes the blue.
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Sunny San Diego NTC
. . . what a beautiful place. I stood watches in this NTC Headquarters Building. Unfortunately, the NTC was one
of the base closures. Nice that the NTC Foundation is planning a revival of the NTC base for a business center. Great place to do
Boot Camp!
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| USN FLEET TRAINING CENTER HEADQUARTERS |
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| SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA |
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| Ken Poorman-Steve Fehr |
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| NTC San Diego 1960 |
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| Chief White |
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| Company Commander Co. 345 |
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BOOT CAMP . . . What . .
. wash my own clothes ? That was worse than the calesthenics every morning before breakfast at 5am , or marching everywhere, or rifle range in 110° sun, or rowing whaleboats, or gas class, or service week, or hell week, or swimming, or even fire fighting! But we made it through, with a little more disclipline than we had when we went in - ha .
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US Navy School of Music, D.C.:
I graduated from the U. S. Navy SOM in 1961
when it was at the Anacostia Naval Station in Washington D.C. The highlight for me was The Corner House and George's Singapore Slings. And the "Little
Tavern" on the corner by the 11th Street Bridge - bags of those little hamburgers - yes. I'll never forget the
first time I heard progressive Jazz by a professional group. Bob Hores took us to Abart's International Studio of Jazz
downtown to hear Horace
Silver. WOW! Barsamian was my piano instructor - can't remember my drum
instructor's name. Hey, and John
Coltrane went to SOM - wow.
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The SOM at Anacostia has since moved to Little Creek VA and was renamed the Armed Forces School of Music. While at the Receiving Station I stood Cordon Duty for President
J. F. Kennedy, and played some gigs at the Bolling AFB Officers Club, the Andrews AFB O' Club, and the USO downtown DC,
where I accidently pushed the piano off of the stage. Keys flew everywhere over the dancefloor. HA - what
a gig! Bob Hores also took a few of us to Abart's in DC, heard Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver...
very cool! Had a lot of good nights at the Corner House in Anacostia! Ate many bags of those little hamburgers
at the Little Tavern up by the bridge.
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Ken Poorman
Ron Bennett & Terry Beard |
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| The Barracks |
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| Jim Knouse & Ken |
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| The Hayloft in DC |
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| T Beard-1c?-R Bennett |
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| The Barracks |
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Sea Duty with COMCARDIV 4:
After
I left SOM, I was assigned to COMCARDIV 4 Unit
Band #194: MUC Joe Gallagher (bandleader); Ken Poorman (keys), Bob
Bowman (bass), Steve Bergstrom (drums); Bob Hores (arranger), John "Sal" Salazar, Jerry Brown, Jack Caldon &
Alfred Hodge (saxes); Jack Ingram (LPO), Paul Sipe, DJ Dechesser, Larry Treaster (trombones); Bob Migacz, Harold
"Shorty" Parker, Joe Pryor, Ted Zelio & Ray "Corky" Corcoran (trumpets). We relieved
COMCARDIV 4 Unit Band #146 on USS Forrestal.
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During at-sea operations, musicians
were trained and assigned to collateral duty, such as Military Police, Air Intelligence (security clearance required), Surface Plotting,
and Flag Administration. I served in each of these billets at one time or another. I found my work in the Air
Intelligence message center most interesting, then surface plotting, I suppose. The MP duty was linited pretty much
to in-port ship parties, and flag administration was basically putting presentations together for the Admiral or other senior
officers in the Flag group. |
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Ports
of Call with COMCARDIV 4:
Sea
duty brought our Unit to many homeland and foreign ports, e.g, Norfolk, Virginia; Portsmouth, Virginia; Alameda, California; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba;
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad; Port-of-Prince, Haiti; Rio de Janero, Brazil; Valpariso, Chile; Lima, Peru; Acapulco, Mexico; San
Diego, California; Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico; Mayport, Florida; Dominican Republic; Cannes, France; Naples, Italy;
Palermo, Sicily; Genoa, Italy; Athens, Greece; Rhodes; Beirut, Lebanon; Barcelona, Spain; Crete; Livorno, Italy; Gibraltar,
Portugal; New York, NY, and some I can't even remember.
We were about a year on the USS Forrestal CVA-59, and about 3 months each on the USS Kitty Hawk CVA-63, USS Franklin D. Roosevelt CVA-42, USS Shangri-La CVA-38, and a quick run on the destroyer USS Kenneth D. Bailey DD-713.
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| SacLant Headquarters, Norfolk VA |
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| Colors every morning 8am here. |
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CINCLANTFLT Band:
When
I left Admiral Hyland's COMCARDIV
4 organization, I was assigned to the CINCLANTFLT / SACLANT-NATO base in Norfolk to finish my active duty.
The CINCLANTFLT band has changed its name twice since then - to the Atlantic Fleet Band, and now to the United States Fleet Forces Band. The Bandleader was Warrant Officer George Briley, and we had about 50+ in the band, I can't remember exactly.
They sent units on tours, and we did colors and taps every day at the base, concerts and parades around the area, and
smaller gigs. I played mostly drums there on official gigs, and Kenny Drew did most of the keyboard gigs. I
played keyboards in two cilvilian combos, and did a lot of off-duty gigs around Tidewater. Mr. B said he would
guarantee me shore duty for the next 6 years if I would ship over. HA! Bye Mr. B. . . I left CINCLANT/SACLANT
and finished out inactive reserve and was discharged in '66. |
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I enjoyed living in Tidewater.
I was so involved in civvy bands, I didn't get to know many of our Navy bandmembers very well-because all of my combo gigs
at night were with civvy's. I lived with a guy and his wife for a while, when I was looking for an apartment,
and I can't even remember their names. I can picture them, but no names. I remember old Charlie, who I played
with pretty regularly, but that was a really rinky dink group. I played with a couple civvy groups that were pretty
good though. Charlie's band played mostly VFW's and American Legions, etc., and the other groups played country clubs,
officers' clubs, etc. Lot of good times in Tidewater.
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Here are links to some of my military hero pages . . .
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