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of Virginia. I never held his good fortune against him—I loved Virginia Beach, and never wanted to go to prep school. And my grades were never good enough to get me into UVA!
    Both my parents died, destitute, in 1977. My father died in May, the victim of many heart attacks and strokes brought about by hard living. My mother died of a heart attack in December. Both were alcoholics and had smoked heavily for many years. My brother died of throat cancer, brought about by copious consumption of booze, in 1993. After becoming a very successful insurance broker he also died penniless because of poor business and personal decisions. Early in my life, I’d decided to follow a different course.
    The summer of 1962 was a pivotal period in my life. I had a big decision to make: what to do after college. After attending Louisburg Junior College in North Carolina for two years, I was finishing my B.A. in history that December at the Norfolk Division of William and Mary. To get through college, I worked thirty-five to forty hours a week at J. C. Penney’s. Four nights a week I worked at a Tastee Freeze. Plus, I was taking a course in night school three evenings a week so I’d have enough math credits to graduate. In order to see my future wife, Becky, I would go by her house about two o’clock in the morning, after leaving the Tastee Freeze.
    One night I told Becky I was thinking about chucking it all and going to Hawaii to surf for a year. I reasoned I could always come back and finish that last semester in school. I asked her what she’d do if I went to Hawaii. She said, “Have at it, but don’t expect me to be here when you get back.” I decided I’d better keep on track instead.
    We got married on August 4, 1962. I kid her about her thinking she was marrying Virginia Beach money. In fact, neither family had much. We were determined to make it on our own. Becky had a great job with the local telephone company. In those days Ma Bell was one of the best employers in town, and she made more than I did in both of my jobs.
    The turning point came on a warm, sunny day in September 1962. I sat on my surfboard 100 yards offshore, waiting for a good wave and wondering what to do after college. Back toward shore, another surfer was paddling out to the lineup. I knew all the guys who surfed in Virginia Beach, and most of the better surfers from other areas. This guy was a good surfer, but I didn’t know his name or anything about him. As he settled in to wait with me, I introduced myself and asked who he was and what he did for a living.
    He told me he was Ron Smith and he was in the Navy, stationed at Little Creek, Virginia. And what kind of job did he have that allowed him to surf whenever he wanted? He was the executive officer of an Underwater Demolition Team (UDT). His boss, he said, liked to play tennis, so they had an agreement. If Ron could surf whenever the waves were good, he would watch the shop while his boss played tennis every afternoon.
    As we got to know each other better through surfing, he began to talk to me about joining the Navy after I finished college. I was impressed by his character and his willingness to befriend a younger guy. But mostly I was impressed with his job. I figured a job that allowed you to surf anytime you wanted was the job for me.
    Ron helped me with the paperwork for getting into the Navy, and I reported to Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island, in January 1963. I’d hoped to start UDT training that summer, but it didn’t work out that way.
    I passed the running, swimming, and strength parts of the test easily. All that remained was the pressure and oxygen toxicity test, which I knew nothing about but wasn’t worried. However, I made the mistake of listening to the diving corpsman who administered the test. He told us that if we felt the least bit uncomfortable to let him know.
    The test was conducted in a recompression chamber. They took