the galleon
TRANSCRIPT
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THE GALLEON NEWSLETTER OF THE
November 15, 2020 —- Volume 20 - No.11
Editor: Sarah McLevy, LTC (USA Ret)
PO Box 4571, St Augustine, FL 32085
Email: [email protected]
Chapter Officers:
President: Gary List, LTC (USA Ret)
1st Vice President: Ken Russom, COL (USMC Ret)
2nd Vice President: Jerry Timoney, COL (USA Ret)
Past President: Ron Birchall, LTC (USA Ret)
Judge Advocate: George Linardos, CPT (USA Fmr)
Secretary: Don Girvan, CPT (USA Fmr)
Treasurer: Rick Cozby, LTC (USA Ret)
Chaplain: David Baker, CDR, (USN Ret)
First POST COVID Monthly Meeting will be held in conjunction with our Annual Thanksgiving Party!
November 18th at the Guy Harvey Resort
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The next will be a Board of Directors
Meeting is Dec 5th, 2020, 5:30-7:00pm at
the Guy Harvey Resort. Submit any re-
quests to Don Girvan at
Join our Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/MOAAACC/
USMC FUN FACTS: During the cake cutting ceremony every Marine Corps birthday, the first three pieces are presented to the guest of honor, the old-est living Marine present, and the third is handed to the youngest Marine present — a perfect way to display brotherhood and connection. Prior to 1921, the Marine Corps celebrated its birthday on July 11th. It wasn’t changed until after MAJ Edwin North McCelland sent Commandant John A . Lejeune a morandum requesting the original November 10th date be declared as a Marine Corps holiday. A lesser know fact is the Marine Corps was disbanded in 1783 after the Revolutionary War and didn’t exist for 15 years. It would make its return on July 11th, 1798, and brand its self as the Corps we’ve come to know
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3 November: Election Day
10 November: US Marine Corps Birthday
11 November: Veterans Day
18 November: MOAA-ACC Thanksgiving Party
26 November: Thanksgiving Day
7 December: Pearl Harbor Day
10—18 December: Happy Hanukkah
13 December: National Guard Birthday
25 December: Merry Christmas
31 December: Annual Membership is due $30
1 January 2021: Happy New Year
7 January: Orthodox Christmas Day
14 January: Orthodox New Year
18 January: Martin Luther King Jr Day
PRESIDENT’S CORNER Dear Fellow Chapter Members,
Well, we have almost made it through 2020 and elec-
tion season. It has been a very interesting year to say
the least. But, hopefully putting that behind us we can
break bread at our Thanksgiving dinner this year at the
Guy Harvey Resort. We picked Guy Harvey for this
years meetings for a variety of reasons, but first and
foremost it has been remodeled and is willing to ac-
commodate our dinner meetings. Even better they
have not put a minimum attendance requirement
which means we can meet without the requisite 25-30
attendees. They did ask that we meet on Wednesdays
and that seemed like an acceptable concession.
We are still planning for a joint National Guard/Officers
Club/MOAA Ancient City Chapter, Pig Roast now
scheduled for January 9, 2021. The purpose will be for
recruiting and to meet fellow officers in the St Augus-
tine area. It should be a fun affair and an opportunity
to meet new friends and most importantly increase our
membership in 2021. I hope you can all attend.
As you know it is Medicare season and although mili-
tary retirees don’t have to do much, it is a good time
to look at the dental and vision programs offered by a
variety of government vendors. Jill and I have found
the costs to be nominal, the benefits good and the
protection against major dental or eye care bills very
worthwhile.
We currently are looking for a membership chair and
perhaps for someone to steward a more social side of
MOAA. Spouses are not only invited to volunteer but
are encouraged to help broaden MOAA-ACC’s activ-
ities and enhance membership interest. An example is
the Sarasota Chapter’s “Young At Heart Officers Or-
ganization” or YAHOO’s for short. Volunteers coordi-
nate activities throughout the year including the Army/
Navy Game, Super Bowl, St Patrick parties as well as
eco tours, museum visits etc. The program is all volun-
tary and the volunteers calculate the costs and at-
tendees pay their own way. This social arm of MOAA
has dramatically enhanced Sarasota’s membership.
If anyone is interested in getting more involved, please
let any member of the Board know.
In the mean time, please stay safe and healthy in the
months to come. Looking forward to seeing you on
November 18,2020 at Guy Harvey’s.
To be continued…..
Gary List, President
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The Oil Patch Warrior A memorial to American oil drillers who volunteered to travel secretly to
England in 1943 and work in the U.K.'s only oil field
Source: www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-oil-patch-warrior
Submitted by Tom Manti (MAJ, USA (Ret)
The Oil Patch Warrior is an evocative bronze statue which commemorates the 42 American oil
drilling roughnecks who, during World War II, traveled to the famous Sherwood Forest in Not-
tinghamshire, England, to expand what was, in 1943, the United Kingdom’s only productive oil-
field. This was at a time when the country was desperate for oil because of the regular losses of
oil tankers to U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic.
The drillers came from both Oklahoma and Texas and were all volunteers. Their companies had
agreed to carry out the work at cost price. The drillers traveled across the Atlantic without inci-
dent on the HMS Queen Elizabeth in March 1943, but of their four drilling rigs, sent separately
by cargo vessels, one was lost to a U-boat attack. The mission was kept top secret at the time.
While in the U.K., they were accommodated at Kelham Hall, an Anglican monastery at the time,
now home to the recently relocated Duke’s Wood Oil Museum, which tells the story of this secret
operation.
By drilling 106 wells (of which 94 were productive) between March 1943 and March 1944, they
were able to increase the oilfield’s output from 300 barrels per day to 3,000 barrels per day,
making a massive contribution to the war effort. The total added wartime production to the field
was 1.2 million barrels and the field continued production up to 1965, helping the country’s post-
war recovery. The total output from the field from 1939-1965 was 47 million barrels.
Of the 42 Noble Drilling Company and Fain-Porter Drilling Company employees who traveled to
England, 41 returned to the U.S. in 1944 but one, Texan derrick-hand Herman Douthit, was
killed in a fall from a drilling derrick and became one of only 32 civilians to be buried in the Amer-
ican Military Cemetery near Cambridge. Fittingly, he was buried with full military honors .
THANKDGIVING DAY
Its Origins Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in the United States, and Thanksgiving 2020 occurs on Thursday, November 26. Although the American concept of Thanksgiving developed in the colonies of New England, its roots can be traced back to the other side of the Atlantic. Both the Separatists, who came over on the Mayflower, and the Puritans, who arrived soon after, brought with them a tradition of providential holidays. Days of fasting during difficult or pivotal moments and days of feasting and celebration to thank God in times of plenty. As an annual celebration of the harvest and its bounty, moreover, Thanksgiving falls under a category of festivals that spans cultures, continents and millennia. In ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans feasted and paid tribute to their gods after the fall harvest. Thanksgiving also bears a resemblance to the ancient Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot. Historians have noted that Native Americans had a rich tradition of commemorating the fall harvest with feasting and merrymaking long before Europeans set foot on their shores. There are always questions as to whether the feast at Plymouth really constituted the first Thanksgiving Day in the United States. There are recorded other ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in North America that predate the Pilgrims’ celebration. Ponce de Leon, upon his 1513 arrival in Florida, gave formal thanks to God for a safe trans-Atlantic crossing. An historical marker erected by the Texas Society of the Daughters of the American Colonists outside Canyon, Texas, states that Father Juan de Padilla conducted a thanksgiving service there in May 1541 for an army of 1,500 accompanying Spanish conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Spanish colonist Juan de Onate and 400 others spent months traveling to reach the Rio Grande. On April 30, 1598, they gave thanks and feasted on fish, ducks, and geese. Some historians argue that America’s first Thanksgiving took place in Florida, 40 miles north and one year earlier than the one in St. Augustine when French Huguenots, Calvinists like the Pilgrims, held a service of thanksgiving and feasted with the Timucuans to celebrate the June 1564 establishment of Fort Caroline along the St. John’s River in present-day Jacksonville.
ST. AUGUSTINE HISTORY SCRAPBOOK By George Linardos, CPT-USA (Fmr)
Blaring trumpets and thundering artillery serenaded Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés as he waded ashore on September 8, 1565. The Spanish admiral kissed a cross held aloft by the fleet’s captain, Father Francisco Lopez, then claimed Florida for both his God and his country. As curious members of the indigenous Timucua tribe looked on, the 800 newly arrived colonists gathered around a makeshift altar as Father Lopez performed a Catholic mass of thanksgiving for their safe arrival in the newly christened settlement of St. Augustine. At the invitation of Menéndez, the Timucuans then joined the newcomers in a communal meal. The Spaniards and Timucuans, unlike the Pilgrims who served food freshly harvested from American soil, were forced to make do with whatever provisions survived the long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The Timucua may have brought locally obtained catches that included alligator, bear, wild turkey, venison, shark, mullet or sea catfish, oysters and clams along with beans and squash. Colonist Sir John Popham and others marked their arrival in the New World by celebrating a Thanksgiving Day on August 9, 1607.
In 1607, colonists in Jamestown gave thanks after they arrived safely in the New World. But the winter of 1609-1610 decimated the colony’s population. Only 60 of the 490 people survived. That spring, the survivors held a Thanksgiving prayer service after their food supply was replenished by the arrival of ships from England.
On December 4, 1619, when 38 British settlers reached a site known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River, they read a proclamation designating the date as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.” When the Good Ship Margaret reached land, the colonists read a statement that said the date “shall be yearly and perpetually kept as a day of thanksgiving,’’ While it can be argued any of the above may claim, as true, the ‘first’ occurrence of a “Thanksgiving Day”, it is ultimately a moot point as all of them lack any historical agency in the evolution of the modern holiday.” In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers, an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth. In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies to what is now known as American’s “First Thanksgiving. The festival lasted for three days.
Although turkeys were indigenous, there is no record of a big roasted bird at the feast. There is also no record of mashed potatoes with gravy. The Wampanoag brought deer and local seafood (mussels, lobster and a variety of fish). The Pilgrims added fruits, corn and pumpkins.
Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to call for a religious fast. Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England settlements as well. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving Proclamation by the national government of the United States. He called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. His successors John Adams and James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies. In 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition. In 1827, the noted magazine editor and prolific writer Sarah Josepha Hale, author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to governors, senators, presidents and other politicians, earning her the nickname the “Mother of Thanksgiving.” It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November. He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s plan, known derisively as Franksgiving, was met with passionate opposition, and in 1941 the president reluctantly signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November. In many American households, the Thanksgiving Day celebration has lost its original religious significance becoming a holiday to share a meal and time with family and friends. Parades have become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States. In store and on-line offers on Thanksgiving Day start the beginning of the Christmas Holiday shopping season. Beginning in the early 20th century the president of the United States has “pardoned” one or two Thanksgiving turkeys each year, sparing the birds from becoming someone’s Thanksgiving meal and sending them to a farm for retirement.
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New members will receive a free nameplate,
chapter mug and your new chapter coin. Call
Jim Cargilo at 904-377-9866, 1LT (USMC) or
email at [email protected]
INFORMATION
CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE MOAA-ACC.ORG
When referring new members to our website PLEASE be
sure to advise them NOT to register/renew via the online link.
That link will direct them to the National Membership form and
our Chapter may not received the dues. Ask them to click the
link below and print the NEW MEMBERS form.
Annual dues are $30.00 due on December 31st of each year for the following year. You may re-new your membership as follows:
1. Make checks payable to MOAA-
ACC and mail to P.O. Box 4571, St.
Augustine, Florida 32085.
2. Pay on-line at MOAA-ACC.ORG
3. Bring your payment to a Chapter meeting.
For further information please call Jim Cargilo, 1LT (USMC) at 904-337-9866 or email at [email protected]
ANCIENT CITY CHAPTER MUGS
Our Ancient City Chapter Mugs make great
gifts, are microwaveable, dishwasher safe and
only $5.00 each. See Harry Metz during our
luncheon meetings or email Harry at amazing-
If you or someone you know would like to place an adver-tisement in the Galleon, please send a check payable to MOAA-ACC to the PO Box Attention: Treasurer and
email all graphics and information to Sarah McLevy @ [email protected].
Yearly costs are: Full Page—$500 1/2 Page—$300
Business Card—$200
Wreath Sponsorship Form *Sponsored wreaths are placed on the grave markers at state, national veterans cemeteries as well as local cemeteries each December. Wreaths may be purchased online at
www.WreathsAcrossAmerica.org
If you wish to make your sponsorship with a credit card please visit our website for a secure online transaction.
Name:_______________________________________________________ Address:_____________________________________________________ City:_________________________________________________________ State:___________________________ Zip:_________________________ Phone:______________________________________________________ Email: ______________________________________________________ Do we have permission to publicize your name as a sponsor? ___ Yes or ___ No, I wish to remain Anonymous
Sponsorship Price Quantity Total
Individual = 1 Wreath (Buy 2 we get 1 additional free) $15.00
Mailed "In Honor" card = If you wish to send a mailed honor card telling someone of your sponsorship-see "In Honor" section below. Card will not be mailed if the $2 fee is not included.
$2.00
Family = 6 Wreaths $60.00
Small Business = 15 Wreaths $150.00
Corporate = 150 Wreaths $1,500.00
Grand Total
SORRY- WE CAN NOT TAKE GRAVE SPECIFIC REQUESTS
All sponsorships are sent directly to the location. No wreaths are sent to the individuals purchasing sponsorships.
In Honor of: _________________________________ Please provide email of “In Honor Of” recipient, or mailing
address so a card can be sent notifying them of your sponsorship in their honor. (if you have a specific message
please write it on the back of this sheet and we will include it.)
Email: ____________________________________________
Mailing: ____________________________________________
In Memory of:
This name will be listed on our online memory wall, please provide name, rank, branch of service and state resided
Branch of Service: ________________________________
Rank: __________________________________________
State: __________________________________________
Please make checks payable to:
Wreaths Across America PO Box 2117
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-2117
Questions? Please call 904-495-6111
Location ID: FLSNSA Fundraising Group ID: FL0080 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR OFFICE USE ONLY: Cash $: ________________________ Total$: ______________________ Date: _______________________ Total # Checks: _________________ Reconciled: ____________________ MO $: ________________________ Entered: _______________________
GEN:
Wreaths Across America Announces 2020 Theme Each year, a new theme is chosen to help volunteers and supporters focus their messaging and outreach in their own communities. WAA announces the theme for 2020: “Be an American Worth Fighting For.” The inspiration for this year’s theme came from a keynote address made by Staff Sgt. Daniel Strong during the 2018 escort to Arlington welcome stop at Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School (Monty Tech) located in Fitchburg, Mass. As an infantryman in the United States Marine Corps, he lost 18 Marines during his service, three were his friends when he was a Lance Corporal, six as their Squad Leader and the remaining nine as their Platoon Sargent. Each impacted SSgt. Strong in a unique way as he witnessed first-hand what true sacrifice was and experienced the ripple effect it has on all involved. His message that December day spoke to the daily importance of the mission to Remember, Honor and Teach, and the emotion is now teacher-engrained in his JROTC students. “Be an American worth the sacrifice. In your daily operations, and in how you deal with one another and how you live your lives,” said SSgt. Strong. “Those young men and women who are in Arlington National Cemetery and other cemeteries, they earned the right for you to, “Be an American Worth Fighting For.” This sentiment speaks volumes as more United States military are deploying to serve and fight, if needed, to protect the freedoms we enjoy as American citizens. Each of them, playing their part so that we too can play ours back home by being an active participant in our communities.
“FREE” ANNUAL Recruiting Pig Roast “FREE”
Saturday -JANUARY 9, 2021 6:00 pm (1800)
registration to reserve attendance TO MOaa-acc pig roast
Name: Military Service: Rank: phone: Email address: Home address: Please bring your spouse, partner and Family children under 12:
1. ________________________________________ 2. _________________________________________
3. ________________________________________ 4. _________________________________________
5. ________________________________________ 6. _________________________________________
7. ________________________________________ 8. _________________________________________
The pig roast is held at amici Italian restaurant, 1915 A1A south (intersection of A1A and SR 312), St. Augustine, Florida 32080. Please arrive by 6:00 pm (1800 military). Your “FREE” attendance to the moaa-acc pig roast indicates your interest in joining moaa-acc. Membership in moaa-acc requires joining moaa national. First year chapter’s dues are “FREE”. See the moaa-acc website, moaa-acc.org, for membership information. Please return your registration to George Linardos, CPT-USA (Fmr) at [email protected] or call 904-495-6111.
ANCIENT CITY CHAPTER