On the morning of November 27, 1959, I was bursting with pride and excitement as I took the oath at Sangley Point to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard. The balmy, humid air smelled of possibility and promise of new adventures waiting up ahead.
There were twenty-five of us, and we all understood that after our swearing in ceremony, we would be restricted to the base, and could no longer go home. Our lives as we knew them would never be the same. After our short indoctrination, we learned we were “Steward Recruits”.
As the weight of what I had committed myself to settled over me, I felt a yearning sense of homesickness and a piercing loneliness. I realized I needed to accept the fact that I wouldn’t see my family again until my four-year enlistment was over, unless I was found unfit to serve for some reason.
As I looked around at those who were being sworn in with me, I noticed we all had the same scared, uncertain expression on our faces. Our future was now completely unknown, and that was a daunting reality for us.
We had some last minute enlistment paperwork to attend to before it was time for us to go to lunch. A petty officer instructed us to get into formation and we marched to the mess hall. We formed a line to get our food which was laid out cafeteria style. I had never seen such a feast before and couldn’t believe my eyes. The savory aroma made my mouth water and my stomach grumble.
Spread before us were green salads, fried chicken, and roast beef for the main course. Assorted cakes and ice cream were deliciously laid out for dessert. If this was the way I could expect to eat every day then I wouldn’t feel so bad about being homesick. Now I could forget about having fish heads and rice for a meal.
I filled up my food tray with everything that looked good, not knowing what it would taste like. I was disappointed that there was no rice; only mashed potatoes. I was excited to find my favorite fruit, duhat, in the salad area.
As I loaded up my plate with what I thought was the sweet, dark berry from the Philippines, I heard the server at the other side of the line say, “You are in for a big surprise.” I didn’t know what he meant, but when I sat down to eat my meal, and bit into the duhat fruit, it was so bitter that I choked and spit it out. Later I learned that the “duhat” were actually olives. Despite the duhat mistake, it was one of the best meals I ever had.
A steward recruit is the lowest position one can hold in the Coast Guard. While we were at Sangley Point waiting to be shipped out, we were assigned work details such as picking up trash around the base, scrubbing toilets, cleaning the mess hall after each meal, and dumping garbage.
While we were on the USNS Barrett en route San Francisco, we were assigned to the galley as mess cooks. We washed dishes, polished silverware, and mopped floors. All of us were relieved when we arrived at Fort Mason and were transferred to the USPHS Hospital for quarantine where we hardly did any manual labor.
The twenty-five of us steward recruits merged with seaman recruits in boot camp at Government Island. Our company was LIMA 29 and was composed of whites, blacks, and Filipinos. Our Company Commander was BM1 Roche, a Frenchman.
The eight weeks of recruit basic training were grueling and exhausting. There were no racial issues that I can remember. Some recruits dropped out for one reason or another. All twenty-five Filipinos made it through boot camp only to endure four more weeks of steward training —polishing silverware, serving food, and perfecting the art of invisibility. Once the four weeks were completed, I received orders for the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Being the most junior steward in St. Pete was not fun to say the least. Besides being unbearably homesick, I had to constantly take orders and do all the menial work from the old timers; Busabos, Manese, and Amano. The work was demanding and tedious at times, and I had very little time to myself. I spent my free time writing letters, playing the ukulele, and sometimes dabbling in art.
One evening while I was on duty, I had just finished serving the evening meal to the duty officers. The Mess Treasurer, LT(jg) Bain, who was in charge of all the stewards, walked in the pantry on his way out to his quarters. I had left my artwork on a small table in the middle of the room and he stopped to examine it. I think I had some pencil sketches and maybe a rough watercolor piece. He complimented me on my work.
The next day, he called me into his office. He wanted to talk to me about an art project. The wardroom had a mural of Coast Guard ships and sailors in action at sea in the old days. The mural had deteriorated so badly that the paint was warped, fading, and peeling off. He asked me if I could touch up the mural prior to a scheduled VIP visit from the District Office in Miami to improve the appearance of the wardroom. At first I hesitated, but then I realized doing something I enjoyed during working hours would be much better than washing dishes, scrubbing toilets, and making up officers’ beds. I accepted, to the chagrin of Busabos and the gang, since they would then have to do the menial work normally assigned to me while I was working on the mural.
The project took me about three days to complete. The VIP’s came and left. They saw my work as we served them lunch in the wardroom during their visit. Later, Mr. Bain congratulated me for the fine job I did on the mural. He said the District staff had noticed it, and he’d received a lot of compliments about my work.
test, and Louise would be my advisor.
I got approval from Busabos about my plan. Louise said I could use her recipe which she had taken from a Betty Crocker Cookbook.The
Word of my art skills began spreading around the base, and shortly after, I was assigned other art projects, including painting signs and notices outside the Coast Guard Exchange building.
However, the Coast Guard did not enlist me as an artist. When there were no more jobs to utilize my art skills on base, I did my normal steward chores. I guess my performance as a steward was satisfactory because Busabos recommended me for promotion from E2 to E3 when I met my time in grade requirement. I learned that the only way to be successful in the Coast Guard was to continually strive for promotion until you have served twenty years, when you can then retire.
To advance in the steward rating was an almost impossible feat. Like a pyramid, the Coast Guard needed more stewardsmen (the workers) at the base than steward petty officers (the supervisors) at the top. In the steward rating, it would take typically five years to get promoted to E4 (Petty Officer Third Class) from the time of enlistment, while most other ratings could advance after only two to three years. And it got even harder to move up the ranks after E4. After 20 years of service as a steward, you could expect to retire as an E6, while the non-stewards achieved a much higher pay grade for the same number of years of service.
I wanted that promotion to Third Class Steward no matter how long it took me. I breezed through the required correspondence courses and completed my practical factors. I was almost ready to take the service wide exam for promotion, but still needed to prove to Busabos that I could be Steward Third material before I could get his recommendation to take the service wide exam. But, to get this promotion meant that I had to demonstrate that I could prepare a dish as part of a wardroom dinner menu. The officers would be the ones to judge my cooking.
I was newly married to Louise at that time, and I consulted her about what to prepare for my cooking proficiency test because I always enjoyed the meals she prepared for us. She would make dessert for me even though I wasn’t much of a sweets person. But I always liked her pineapple upside-down cake and decided I would bake one for my cook in charge of the galley, CS1 Spencer, a 250-pound black guy who looked like Aunt Jemima. Spencer and I got along well. We often shot craps in the storeroom, and we played poker with a bunch of guys after pay day. I told Spencer I needed to use his oven for my proficiency test, and, being such a nice guy, he gave me permission. Now I was all set.
On the menu for dinner, the main course was Prime Rib au Jus that would be prepared by Busabos, and I would make the pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. Reviewing the Betty Crocker cookbook, I realized it was a recipe to serve six people. We were expecting 20 officers for dinner that day. No problem, I thought. With simple math, I multiplied each ingredient by 3.33, and adjusted the amount of each ingredient to serve 20 people, and went on with my baking.
Somewhere along the line, I must have made a serious error with my calculations in converting teaspoons to tablespoons. As a result, I ended up putting a lot more baking powder than what was required.
As the cake rose and expanded, the oven door popped open, and a massive flow of batter oozed out of the opening and spilled down over the floor. Unfortunately for me, Spencer witnessed the whole disaster. He was fuming mad and ordered me to clean up the mess and told me not to leave the galley until he was satisfied the oven was spotless. I had never seen him that angry before and obediently did as I was told.
With no other options, and no time to prepare anything else, I hastily fixed up my pineapple upside down cake by getting rid of the excess batter, and served it to the officers. I was too embarrassed to show my face in the wardroom while the officers were having dessert. The officers were aware I made the cake for my proficiency exam.
Later, I asked Busabos what the officers thought of my cake. Busabos said that he got feedback from Lt(jg) Bain, our Mess Treasurer, that the officers liked my dessert and they unanimously recommended that I should be allowed to take the service wide exam for promotion.
To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I didn’t think it was because of my cake. I have always suspected that it was the mural on the wardroom walls that I had revived, and the admiration of the District staff and Commander that made the difference. They must have been thinking I had this special talent that the Coast Guard could utilize during my service, and decided to overlook my cake fiasco, and give me a chance to advance my career.
I took the service wide exam for Steward Third Class and passed it, but I was very low on the advancement list because there were hundreds of TNs ahead of me who had seniority. Realistically, I would have to keep taking the service wide exam for several years before I could get promoted.
After serving three years at the Air Station, I was transferred to the USCGC Nemesis across the harbor. The Nemesis was a 165-foot cutter home-ported at the USCG Base, and whose main mission was to patrol the Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Florida.
During the time I was on the Nemesis, the cutter was very active in rescuing the refugees who fled imprisonment and hardship from communist Cuba. Castro and his rebels had overthrown the government and quickly set up a severe regime and dictatorship that few could survive. Desperate to escape the violence and turmoil, the refugees packed as many people as they could into makeshift rafts and boats to seek asylum in Miami. We were assigned the task of picking them up from our waters.
This was my first sea duty. The constant sway and rocking of the ship against the waves caused me to get violently seasick, which made the experience extremely unpleasant.
There were two of us stewards on board. I worked for Steward Third Class Felix Aguilar. Due to my severe sea sickness, I was totally useless, and Aguilar didn’t like it one bit because he had to carry out my duties. He got so fed up with me one time and reprimanded me for being incompetent and told me I should get out of the Coast Guard as I would not make anything out of myself in this outfit. I couldn’t argue with him. I thought he was right. I wasn’t carrying my load. But, I couldn’t leave the Coast Guard now. I had a wife and two kids to feed. I told myself I just needed to try harder, no matter how much I hated it, or how seasick I was.
One sunny Sunday afternoon, on a routine patrol, the sea was calm like glass, and I wasn’t sick. As I was cleaning the wardroom from lunch, I heard we picked up about twenty refugees, including women and children, drifting on a raft. The crew had gathered them all on the fantail. Shell-shocked and starving, they were fed and given blankets to keep them warm and dry.
I had about two hours of free time before I had to begin preparing the wardroom for the evening meal, and went outside on the main deck to get some fresh air. As I strummed my ukulele, I saw the refugees. They were looking at me with open curiosity. I approached them and tried to start a conversation in English, but none of them seemed to understand me.
Two young boys smiled and pointed at my ukulele. Taking my cue from them, I started strumming, thinking of a song they would know. The only Spanish song I could remember was “Cielito Lindo”, so I played the chords on my ukulele, and began to hum the tune, and pretty soon, the kids were singing along.
Then I played “La Cucuracha”. Some members of the crew came and joined the group. We sang English songs such as “You are My Sunshine” and “When the Saints Go Marching In”. Everyone joined in and it was a wonderful way to connect all of us.
When I looked back over my shoulder, I saw the captain on the starboard bridge wing witnessing the whole thing. We made eye contact and he gave me a thumbs up of approval. That turned out to be a very good day for my morale. Even Aguilar was proud of me.
Not long after, I became a U.S. citizen—thanks to my marriage to Louise, a U.S. citizen, the process was quick. I received my citizenship in late 1963. While still on the Nemesis, I submitted a request to change my rate from Steward to Electronics Technician. The captain gave me a strong endorsement.
I passed the Electronics Technician exam and cleared the background check for a Secret security clearance. I was re-designated from Stewardsman to Seaman and received orders to attend the Electronics Technician “A” School at the Coast Guard Training Center in Groton, Connecticut.
It was a great feeling. My time as a steward had finally come to an end.
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