Navy History of Leroy E. Jones

The USS Everglades AD-24

This was my first assignment following LDO Class in Newport, RI. It was now time to put into practice all that I had learned in Newport and all of the experience from the eleven years prior to obtaining a commission.

This tour of duty was long and very exciting. My first assignment as an Officer and I lucked out with a Commanding Officer that dedicated his life to developing young officers. Even though I was 31 years old I qualified as a ‘young' officer by virtue of my being a freshly minted Ensign. Five of the LDO class were sent to the Everglades. Captain Steinbeck was a jewel of a CO. In 2011 I tried to contact him to tell him how much I appreciate the excellent job he did in developing me for my career as an officer. I found he and his wife have both passed away. I'm so sorry I was unable to let him know how I feel.

An example of his sterling leadership is how he handled an error I made while in CIC for a midnight to four watch. We encountered another ship approaching us from ahead but offset to the starboard side. My recommendation was to turn to port to widen the distance of our passage. They didn't follow my recommendation and turned to starboard and the other ship did the same. At four in the morning as I left CIC to go crawl into bed for what little there was left of the night I found Capt. Steinbeck waiting for me in the Chart Room. He had me sit down and explain my thinking behind the recommendation I had made. I explained how I viewed the situation and why I made the recommendation. He said, "You just described the collision between the Andre Doria and Stockholm." I learned that if a meeting situation was such that it could be viewed as meeting, even if offset in the way that situation was it had to be treated as "meeting" and turn to starboard to pass port to port. That was all he said and from then on my recommendations were followed.

Following a watch my watch partner, Ensign Hicks (another one of the LDO school graduates) and I would go to the Wardroom and get a mug of soup that was always on the stove staying warm. We would discuss all of the details of the watch and ease ourselves down from the tight feeling we always felt after a watch. Then we could go to bed and catch a little sleep before time to be up and into the next day. I loved those times... the watches and the recap of the watch over a mug of warm soup.

Ens Hicks and I swapped CIC and Underway OOD every other watch. Hicks had a strange quirk when he would send a note to the bridge or CIC it was usually in rhyme. I should have saves some of them. After all those times at sea on the USS Teaberry AN-34 when I was seasick it was wonderful to be at sea on the Everglades, not seasick and standing watches as CIC Officer or OOD Underway. I loved it.

The night I broke the Admiral's new TV set

The Everglades was the Flag Ship for the Service Force Group when involved with fleet exercises and such. Usually the Admiral's cabin was an unused space with white carpet which was visited only on routine tours of the ship by the OOD, CDO, Sounding and Security watch etc.

We were to participate in a Fleet Exercise in the area of Cuba and the Admiral would be aboard for the exercise. A new, state of the art, TV had been purchased for instillation in his cabin. My ET's were to remove the TV from the housing it came in and install the chassis and picture tube etc. in a cabinet in the Admiral's cabin. It was determined that additional cooling was needed since the confines of the cabinet did not allow the heat generated to dissipate.

The set was removed from the cabinet and work was progressing installing super quiet fans in the cabinet. The set, with all the innards exposed, was placed on a table in the center of the cabin.

The XO was making his rounds of the ship in the wee hours of the morning and discovered the situation and came to my cabin, woke me up and told me to get the men who were working on the project up and have them put the TV into the box to protect it while the work on the cabinet was in progress.

I got up and dressed and started for the crew's quarters for my Division. It occurred to me that I didn't know where the men I needed slept in the compartment and would have to disturb the whole Division to find them. Also, as an Enlisted man I had repaired hundreds of TV sets and felt competent to do the job myself. So I went to the Admiral's cabin and started to lower the TV into the box... and snagged the neck of the picture tube on the edge of the box. The TV set continued into the box without the tip of the picture tube neck!

It was now about three am and I had just broken the Admiral's new TV set! I went immediately to the XO's cabin and woke him up to tell him what I had done. Now, he was a Naval Academy graduate and he gave me the full plebe treatment for about 20 or 30 minutes at a volume that was audible throughout Officers Country!

Then, an unexpected thing happened. He told me to sit down in the chair next to his desk and he sat down at his desk, still in his skivvies, and we began to work on solving the problem. The set was state of the art and parts were not in the pipeline as yet. We had nine days before the Admiral came aboard to occupy his cabin and it took all nine days to get the TV set fixed and installation completed.

The most amazing result of my stupid mistake was that because of the way I had handled it, reporting my error to the XO immediately, my word aboard the ship was golden. At Arrival Conferences my response to questions was never second guessed. The Captain would tell the arriving ship that if the situation changed so that a rejected job order could be accepted Mr. Jones would contact them. That was not his response with the other Repair Officers.

The lesson I took from this experience was that is was far better to admit a mistake immediately so that the problem was being addressed instead of an investigation to determine the cause of the problem. That approach had always been my way of dealing with my errors but this event was so significant that it really pointed out the advantages of that approach to problems.

Papal Christmas Mass, Rome 1965

Chaplain Bott requested that I take charge of the three day Christmas tour to Rome for him. He had been experiencing problems with the Tour Company he was using for tours of Rome. That meant that I was on duty for the tour.

There were three busses with officers and men from the Destroyers the Everglades was performing repair work for as well as those from the Everglades. There was one other officer from the Everglades, the Chief Warrant Carpenter.

When the busses arrived in Rome they pulled into St. Peters Basilica and everyone was off loaded and organized with the Everglades personnel on one and the Destroyer Squadron Commodore and his officers and men on the other two. The Everglades buss went to a very nice hotel, the other two evidently to one of lesser quality. Soon the Commodore and his officers joined us at our hotel. That was strike one against the Tour Group!

At breakfast Christmas morning I called the Tour Company representative over and asked him how many tickets he had for Papal Mass. He said the USO didn't have tickets. I left my breakfast and we went to the USO to find out what was going on. At the USO I was told that there were plenty of tickets available. I was to have those wishing to attend Mass dropped off at the USO (an easy walk to the Basilica) and they would be provided tickets. On the way back to the hotel I was reading the Tour Company representative the riot act! Strike two!

Arrangements were made for a short special tour of Rome for those who didn't care to attend Mass. The CWO Carpenter and I were among that group. The special tour was completed and back at the Basilica before Mass and as the CWO and I stepped off the bus the Tour Company representative saw us and in trying to get into my good graces talked a passing man out of his ticket and gave it to me. We started walking down the isle between the roped off areas. I was in uniform and had a single ticket. The ushers kept motioning us further forward... and forward and eventually forward past the last roped off area. There was only the steps and the actual setup for the Mass ahead. We walked up the steps and took the last two seats available. They happened to be in the front row to the right of the alter. The front row was padded chairs and padded kneeling pad. Behind us were benches .

I sat there thinking that we were not Catholic and had not cared to attend Mass. Yet here we were in seats millions of Catholics would almost sell their soul to be in.

Smugglers!

I received a phone call in my Hotel room in the wee hours of Christmas night. We were to load up the busses and return to Naples in the morning. It was a lady who had gotten my name from one of the sailors in a bar. She said she and her husband were archiologists and had some artifacts they wanted to get back to the States. Would I be willing to take some of them back aboard the Everglades? I said I would be willing to help them. If they would turn the artifacts over to Customs and have them get in touch with me I would be most happy to help. Oh no! They couldn't do that! Of course, I already knew it was against the law to remove artifacts from Italy.

Well, eventually our deployment to Naples was over and we got underway to leave the Med. We made an R &R stop at Cannes, France for a few days. A Chief in the Repair Department became concerned because he had taken packages from that couple. He reported what he had done to the Executive Officer and they opened the packages and found artifacts instead of the drugs they expected to find. But, it was illegal to remove artifacts from Italy so the Chief returned to Naples under guard with the packages to face the music.

When ships arrived back in the States there were FBI, Customes Officials, Navy Criminal Investigation and other law enforcement representatives awaiting all the ships returning from Italy. There were Officers, Chiefs and Petty Officer on many of the ships that had taken artifacts from that pair of smugglers. There but for the grace of God... Had I taken any aboard it would have been the end of my career and a not very pretty end at that! A good number of careers ended badly.

How an ET2 made me look so good in the eyes of my superiors... twice

My leadership method was to observe my men to determine their skill and work ethic. Once I was satisfied they knew their job and would do it I got out of their way and let them do their job. The result of this approach was that they usually developed an attitude of "ownership" and did more than was expected of them.

An example of this is the Test Equipment Calibration Lab on the Everglades. Each week I checked the output of our lab against that of all the other labs in the world (for all services) and we were always right up with the leaders. One week we were twice as good as any lab in the world! Obviously there was a mistake... or we were doing something totally different from what all the other labs in the world were doing.

I checked it out and found that ET2 Adlis had set up a folding table across the lab door and put a power strip in it. When test equipment was delivered to the lab it had to be plugged in and checked for basic function. If it didn't have basic function it didn't even come into the lab. They would submit another job order to have it repaired.

The result of this simple step was that the only equipment taken into the lab worked and only needed to be calibrated. Before, a lot of time was spent troubleshooting equipment that didn't work to see if it was something that could be fixed in the Calibration Lab or had to be rejected for repair in the Repair Shop. Now, all of their time was devoted to calibration and productivity doubled!

What he had done made me look good in the eyes of my superiors even though I told them he had taken the action on his own.

Years later I would encounter this young man in Subic Bay. He would then be Chief Adlis running the Calibration Lab on another Destroyer Tender and would once again make me look so good by taking the job orders the facilities in Subic could not handle even though his ship was not in Subic to do repair work for other ships. Once again he made me look so good in the eyes of my superiors.

The success I enjoyed in my career was because I was standing on the shoulders of some truly great young men who worked for me.

In all those years I only had to write one poor evaluation report. When the young man came to my stateroom to go over his evaluation he asked me why I had given him a poor evaluation. I told him I had not given him a poor evaluation... he had given himself a poor evaluation by his performance, I had only recorded it. His performance from then on was great. I can't sing the praise of all the fine men who worked for me loud enough. They were the greatest!